


Pain Radiates

by Analinea



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Claudia Stilinski Feels, Endgame Sterek, Happy Ending, Hurt Derek, Hurt Stiles, Kidnapping, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Meeting the Pack, Non graphic violence, Panic Attacks, Stiles is an anxious mess, efficient bad guy, light humor, mostly from Isaac, moving to Beacon Hills AU, slow burn I suppose, something!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7197704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles moves in Beacon Hills with his dad, but they quickly understand that they're on someone's territory. They're tired of running though, so maybe they'll find a place here. People who can accept Stiles for what he is. Maybe he won't have to be alone anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who are you

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this story is finished but since I love the idea of publishing chapters by chapters I'll set up a two-chapters per week posting rhythm? Plus, I have to edit the last chapters so they're not as lame as they are now :D
> 
> When I write in English I feel a lot like Vizzini in the Princess Bride, you know, "I do not think it means what you think it means." but heh...
> 
> If you feel like I forgot a tag let me know! And I promise it'll not be just angst!

Courage, she said, is not the act. Courage is the strength to do what has to be done despite the fear eating at us. Stiles thinks of those words his mother said to him, some of the last. He thinks of them as he uses his energy to send the kid to safety, knowing he will never have enough time to do the same for himself.

His courage is deeply inhaling and breathe out _go_ , thinking this is more important when all he wants to say, shout, is _I don't want to die_. _I'm terrified of what's on the other side because I know, I know_. There's so many things he wanted to do.

Heal his soul, stay with the Pack, having the  _courage despite the fear_ to build a new family like you plant a tree (years to grow but seconds to be cut down). He's tasted what it's like not to be alone now, and he desperately wants someone to be with him before the end.

In the end, none of that matters. He has no time for more anguish: all that's left is the darkness that envelops him and the faraway echoes of screams that sound like his name. He didn't even have time to cry, only to feel a second of immeasurable pain.

Pain, they said when she died, fades away with time until it's not there anymore. Pain, he had though then, is more like a piece of glass in your flesh, cutting edges reminding themselves at every move, sending a wave of signals alongside your bones that tell you you're the one still standing. You would like to lie down too, but the radiating pain keeps you from closing your eyes and every time you blink you see the face of your father ; you can't leave him too.

When all of his senses shut down, there's still a second to remember. Stiles goes back to this Monday morning, at his new high school. He looked at them thinking  _this is strange_ .

 

֍

 

Stiles looks at people from his Jeep. Here's a teacher that wears the clothes he will be buried in. There's a girl that lost someone close recently. It's not really useful informations, it's just things he knows.

When he finally gets out of his car to enter the hall of his new high school, he notices three guys talking in hushed tones. One of them has brown skin and hair, one is tall and has curly blond hair, the last is a black guy and the less animated of them. The second the doors close behind Stiles, the teens turn their heads sharply towards him and wrinkle their noses. Stiles thinks it's weird.

It's not the first time people sensed the wrongness of him ; humans avoid him without realizing it and he can't talk to anybody without having the person try to get away from him as quickly as possible. It's not their fault really, but people fear death and their instinct doesn't care what his power can do, only senses its nature.

But even then, no one ever detected it from this far away and so immediately, and frankly no one has ever  _smelled_ it. 

The teens go back to their conversation soon enough, and Stiles is relieved to be free of the disgusted look. It's also kinda hurtful to think something that is part of him could be so repugnant. Surprising too, usually people ignore him or run away from him, never acknowledge what he is in such a way.

When they do, acknowledge it, they either try to kill him because of all the wrong reasons -and if they  _knew_ how wrong they are they would rather urgently put him in the endangered species lists- or have a kind of distant respect for him. Braid flower crowns to put on his head but never look directly at him.

Stiles gets all the informations he needs for his first day, resolute to find his way across school on his own to avoid the embarrassment of running after someone yelling “help”. He finds his first class seconds before the bell rings.

One of the three guys from earlier is here, the brown haired one with a crooked jaw. He doesn't look at him though, focused on something on his phone that makes his eyebrows scrunch up and Stiles relaxes a fraction. 

The roll call tells him the guy's name is Scott McCall. Stiles puts that information in a corner of his head. When class gets too boring, he looks at Scott and imagine seating next to him, being friends. It's a game Stiles plays sometimes without really wanting to.

It quickly gets too painful, being lost in this dream of having a childhood best friend, almost brothers, watching together from afar the slow waltz of unknowing humans, suddenly waking up with his loneliness as sole company.

 

The rest of the day gets by as everyday of school ever goes by. Boring, uneventful, tiring. Stiles looked for Scott and his friends at lunch to use as a distraction, but they were not there. There was a girl though, with strawberry blond hair. There was something about her that made the back of Stiles neck tingle. When she raised her head and noticed him looking she narrowed her eyes dangerously and he ducked his head.

Stiles gets home before his dad. It's hard to think of it as home. The thing is, they moved so often in the past years that it's a concept that doesn't mean anything anymore. It just brings up an old ache and the faded memories of a blue house with a tree out front.

The teen goes up to his room already cleaned up of the few boxes holding his stuff -they've been here a week already so he had time to empty even his dad's- and drops his bag. The bedroom doesn't have a lot of personal touches because it's easier to move out that way, so he really prefers working on the kitchen table.

He takes the books he needs and gets back down, takes a snack and gets on with his homework. Stiles has no idea how much time has passed when he hears the sound of a car pulling up the driveway, only that when he raises his head the sky is a few shades darker.

He gets up, turns on the lights and opens the door to see his father get out of the cruiser and walk up to the house, his new Sheriff badge catching the light spilling from the house. When he took the job he told his son “It's okay kiddo, a bit of fresh air and some new faces is good to me.” Stiles tried to believe him but all he could hear was  _it's your fault I can't have a home again._

John gets to the porch steps.

“It could have been a burglar.”, he says with a playful smile.

“Parking in the driveway? Because yeah, burglars are _that_ stupid.”, Stiles snorts and moves to the side to let his father in.

“How was the first day?” John hangs up his coat. He started work two days after he got here so he was a bit anxious for Stiles to finally have something to occupy his days. He's never at peace when his son is alone with his thoughts.

“Boring.”, Stiles simply answers.

“That's it? Boring? Give me something to work with here, kid.”, his dad says absentmindedly, running a hand down his tired face and padding inside the kitchen to get himself the cold beer he dreamed of all afternoon.

“Well, the Chemistry teacher has a bit of an asshole vibe.”, Stiles starts, ignoring the way his father's eyebrows shoot up at the swearing. If John tries to say anything about it, Stiles will without a fault have something new and desperately logical to shoot back about cursing. It's a fight the Sheriff learned to give up a few years ago.

They talk for a while, preparing dinner and eating, exchanging impressions of the town and the people in it. They're pretty sure Mrs Vony, the old lady next door, is a witch. She has a very peculiar garden and it has to be her that left a basket full of homemade cakes and breads in front of their door when they arrived. On top of the cloth protecting the food, there was lavender, daffodils and some wisteria petals that they kept for a few day to chase away the scent of an empty house.

They're also pretty sure the old man on the other side of the street is spying on them with binoculars.

 

The next day is pretty much the same. Stiles observes the other students, tries to understand the codes, the hierarchy. He also looks at Scott and his friends and thinks that it's strange.

At lunch, he establishes that the strawberry blond haired girl and Scott are part of the same group. There's also a girl with a dimpled smile and one that seems out of place, like she belongs to a wilder place. There's an empty chair around the table, the kind of thing only Stiles would notice.

The same afternoon, Stiles has a class with the first girl, name's Lydia. She's smart, something that shows through the few comments she makes to the teacher.

When the bell finally rings, Stiles gets his stuff and gets up. Lydia's still sitting and gathering her notes and just as he passes next to her their hands brush. It lasts less than a second, but the static shock is enough to make them both gasp.

He mumbles “Sorry.” and doesn't wait for her answer, leaves without looking back. He doesn't want to make it seem like a big thing. Plus, his mind is trying to understand what this could mean.

First, the three guys sniffing him out, now Lydia with the strange pull he feels towards her and what just happened now. Maybe he stumbled into one of these towns were the supernatural has a strong presence, maybe the town even belongs to them in a territorial way that the humans don't know about.

He hopes not, because it could cause a lot of troubles if he's trespassing, and the last thing he needs is a group of creatures running him and his dad out of town. He couldn't bear the look of disappointment his father would try to hide.

He's going to have to talk to the man about it, they have an agreement not to hold any information to each other. Secrets can make the difference between alive and dead, they've learned that the hard way.

Then, they both can do some research and try to understand what's going on. If whatever the situation is proves threatening, they'll move out. If not, Stiles has no idea what they'll have to do. In all these years, they never met a lot a supernatural beings apart from the witches and faeries that still know the old traditions. They certainly never stumbled on a- a what? Herd, pride, pack, nest?

The only thing Stiles is certain about is his hope that whatever these teens are, they won't be the kind to associate his powers with evil intention and try to get rid of him in a more permanent way. It's also why he's glad his dad is the Sheriff and has his own channels at dispositions, so they don't take the chance to make contact with kill-first-ask-later people.

All this reeling in his mind, Stiles gets home and the cruiser's already parked in front. It makes him instantly feel safer.

“Hey kiddo.”, John calls from the living room. As soon as Stiles is in sight, the Sheriff frowns. “What's wrong, son?” Stiles hates this look on the man's face, the same one as after his mom's death. It makes him turn his head down.

“It's, um,” the teen starts, anxiously wrings his hands together, “I think there's people in town we should look up.”

It's all he has to say, and it makes his dad's strangely relax. Maybe they're too used to this, the Damocles sword over their heads, and the familiarity of an unknown possible threat brings a routine that puts their bodies on autopilot. Stiles' not sure if it's better or worse than the worry or the faraway look his dad has sometimes, like he remembers a better time in a blue house, before Stiles.

 

The third day of school, Stiles feels like he's an undercover cop. Well, he supposes it's nothing like being an undercover cop, but it's the game he played when he was a kid instead of spy, so even if he's actually spying instead of infiltrating, he's going to call it like that. It's way cooler in his opinion anyway.

Turns out he doesn't have much to do before he runs into Scott talking to an Asian girl in a corridor. They're leaning in each other's space and straighten up as soon as the rest of their friends turn up. Stiles didn't really thought about looking for that kind of informations when he started his secret operation, but what can you do?

So the Asian girl that wasn't at lunch the day before and Scott are maybe in a relationship they're trying to keep secret. Maybe even from themselves. Stiles squints his eyes from behind his locker door to see what the group is doing.

Scott is looking like a child caught steeling candies and turns wide eyes...Dimpled smile's way. But the two aren't together so it doesn't make...Stiles blinks rapidly and turns back to his books. He's not here for the new Beacon High Musical movie, and who's with who is not what's important right now.

Still, it seems like it's all he's going to get. He turns a corner, and Dimpled smile is blushing while talking to Curly blond. He sits into class and Scott's looking at Asian girl -Kira- with heart eyes. He goes for lunch and Scott's looking at Dimple smile with sadness.

It almost distracts him, and it mostly annoys him as much as Lydia, judging from her raised eyebrows and little huffs.

But Stiles manages to get some new clues. Wild girl playfully hits Scott on the arm and makes the boy stumble two steps on the side. Physical strength. He follows them to the Lacrosse field and Scott, Kira, Curly hairs and Big guy are all the bests on the team. Agility, speed, good senses.

At the end of the day, he even catches the rest of their names, Allison, Isaac, Boyd and Malia. It makes his life a whole lot easier and it's the most tangible thing he'll have to give to his dad.

What bothers him the most is the gray figure following all of them everywhere. But it's not a priority for now.

Last period, all of them have disappeared. The same night, when he gets home, he hears about some troubles in the warehouse district on the police scanner he has in his car to keep an eye on his father's wellbeing.

His dad gets home later and tells him there was reports of a few gunshots and sounds of fighting animals. Big animals. When the police got there, all that was left was a weird graffiti on the ground. John shows the picture, it's a pentagram with something written in kanjis inside the circle. Stiles does a quick search. It's a summoning circle.

 

The next day when Stiles parks into the school parking lot and gets out of his Jeep, he feels eyes on him. He slowly turns to the source of his discomfort, and there's a guy in the corner looking over the top of a black Camaro. Isaac just evidently said bye to the man currently glaring at Stiles with furrowed brows.

His heartbeat picks up, because this is a look that spells danger, it's someone really understanding what the weird feeling Stiles emits is. It brings paranoiac images of seven teenagers cornering him and threatening him, hurting him. He quickly looks away and hurries into school. He's anxious all day. For the first time in years, he doesn't speak about it to his dad, he doesn't really know why. Maybe he's too scared that this time instead of “It's okay.”, he will get a “I hate the day you were born, your mom would still be here if we never had you. You ruined my life.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why did you think? Did it make you want to read the rest? Can you guess what Stiles is? Kudos are loved and the shortest comment gives me life :D  
> You can always come by to [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com) to talk to me :)


	2. Letting the mask fall down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, since I'm weak and I had a pretty good day, I'm putting up the chapter a little earlier than intended ;)
> 
> Also, since you guys are amazing for commenting and I love you, I'll update three times a week instead of two, mondays, wednesdays and fridays! 
> 
> The Big Reveal™ is in this chapter, and let me tell you I'm a bit anxious guys! I hope you won't be disappointed or anything! It's my own twist on the thing so...haha
> 
> Enjoy :)

It's Stiles' second week of school already. The anxiety that built up since he saw the guy in the parking lot is starting to keep him awake at night, making him tired all the time. It feels like a blade piercing his stomach, makes it difficult to breathe and the constant tension in his shoulders is starting to get painful.

Stiles doesn't know what the guy sensed in him, but Scott and his friends turn suspicious looks his way every so often, even if they seem to try and be subtle about it. Stiles doesn't back down under the pressure and the worry: he goes to every class and ignore them when they glance his way, he keeps going to eat in the cafeteria. He's not one for cowering and hiding.

Still, when he realized he shared a class with almost all of them on Friday, he was a mess. He barely managed to drive home, hands shaking, a bundle of tension and raw nerves. There was a basket waiting from him in front of the door with a cake and a small pot of chamomile he immediately infused in hot water. He avoided the panic attack.

So it's Monday again and Stiles hopes the week-end got him the time to calm down a little and start back school in a better state of mind.

He doesn't have much new informations on Scott and his friends though, and looks at them less too. If I don't see them, they don't see me, or something like that. What he knows is that the day after the kanjis incident half of them didn't come to school.

His dad doesn't have much, either. Well, not much that could help them understand what's going on in this town. Stiles can see the lines of worry more prominent every day on his father's face and hopes he won't decide to move out anyway just to be safe.

So, for now Scott and Kira don't have much on them. Scott's mom is a nurse and his dad's an FBI agent that left town a few years back. The kid is said to have severe asthma so they suppose that whatever the teen is, he wasn't before.

Kira moved in town at the beginning of the year, her father becoming the History teacher. The infos on her mom are a bit blurry though.

As for the others, Isaac lived with an abusive father that died the year before, and his new guardian is someone called Derek Hale, which Stiles recognized as the scowling camaro guy. The same Derek has lost his whole family in a fire approximately around the time Stiles' mom died and Scott's father's left. His sister also got killed in Beacon Hills a year ago.

Allison moved in town around the same time, and it turned out her aunt was the arsonist that killed the Hales, and her grandfather disappeared some months later. Her mother also apparently killed herself.

Malia was found in the wood just before last summer after years being missing. Lydia had been injured -bitten- last winter and disappeared in the woods for two days after that.

There's not much on Boyd either, apart from his missing sister.

All of these informations seem linked, if only by the fact that the murders rates got alarmingly high in Beacon Hills since Derek Hale's sister got killed. None of this is really reassuring for Stiles and his dad and the death of the previous Sheriff seems like a bad omen now. Even if those guys are good ones, the town is apparently a hell mouth. It's a wonder it's still populated at all ; and how is the high school even still running with the amount of damages done there? Who knows.

 

Days pass. The looks from Scott and his friends get less and less frequent, but are still there. He didn't see again the frowning guy, Derek, but maybe that's because Stiles always finds something to do around his locker until the school's almost cleared out.

There's still the feeling of being watched that follows him home though, and with some help he also caught sight of a shadow slinking back into the trees as soon as he looks that way. He's under surveillance. He would find it rude if he wasn't doing the same thing, really, but whoever they are they still have the upper hand and the numerical advantage, so it still feels threatening.

It's Friday, and Stiles can't wait for the week-end. He looks forward to spend some time with his father who has the Sunday off. Maybe they'll have new information, maybe they'll take the day off on even this research because Stiles is about to go crazy with turning everything again and again in his mind, and he needs the reprieve from the anxiety.

At this point, all he can suppose is that half of the teens in this little group are shifters of some kind, but again the super strength and super senses could mean a lot of things.

Stiles walks into his English class, the one he shares with Scott, Boyd, Isaac, Allison and Kira, and he has a bad feeling the second he sits down. He looks over to the five friends, all in the same corner with an empty desk next to Boyd, but they're not glaring at him. So it must be something else that gives him chills, like a cold hand at the back of his neck.

A man comes in, and the cold turns into freezing and seizes his chest.

“I'm Mr Wells, the substitute teacher. Mr Nelson won't be here for some time. You'll be doing group works in the mean time, with groups of...”, the man hesitates, counting the students while his words sink in and the students start to grumble and whisper.

Stiles' stomach is a knot. It's already hard to navigate the school when no one will talk to him, but the thing with forced isolation is that you quickly lose the few social skills you had in the beginning. Apart from his dad, witches and ghosts, Stiles gets confused with how he's supposed to communicate with people. Observing and putting into practice are two very different things.

“Six.”, the teacher finishes. Everyone else is grouping up but Stiles suddenly can't breathe. The decision is logical, there's twenty-four people in the class. He slowly looks over the only ones that are missing a group member. They tense up and look over him with a mix of coldness and defeat.

Scott and his friends look at each other before getting up like everyone else in the class to organize the desks, and it's Kira that turns to him with a small smile and an apologetic face, waving for him to join them. He gathers his stuff and approaches awkwardly, standing on the edge as they all get the chairs placed and sit.

There's only one vacant chair, and Stiles takes one look at it before putting his books down and turning to take another one and sets it a little back from the others. He doesn't look at anybody as he sits down. Starring at his lap seems like a really more pleasant alternative than facing the situation. He hopes he won't have a panic attack right now.

Who he believes is Scott clears his throat, there's the sound of a paper being picked up and then his voice lists all the thematics they have to choose from.

Stiles raises his head tentatively and swallows convulsively at Boyd's cold stare. It's not exactly anger, it's not really hate. Stiles understands, he does. It's just that it doesn't stop the fear and the deep want to just say sorry over and over until there's no air left in his lungs. He didn't choose to remind people of their loses like that at the worst timings. He's kinda used to it, with his dad.

Allison puts a hand on Boyd's shoulder, but the teen ignores it and opens his mouth. By then, Stiles is resigned for what he knows will come.

“Why did you take another chair?”, spits the big guy, and the question would not only sound ridiculous to anybody else, but the tone it's said with would be particularly strange. There's a deep hurt that makes Boyd lash out with his intonation, even as nothing else shows it, and that speaks of an impressive self-control.

What Stiles understand more that anything, is what the question really means. It's not asking why Stiles moved some furniture around the class. It's asking how he knows, who told him. Why did he have to make the emptiness of the chair so blatantly obvious and remind them of...It asks if it's a way of taunting them and it asks if he's a threat.

It should be clear his not, what with his body language, but cold headed and logical are difficult to be when you're hurt. So Stiles takes a decision right then.

He's so tired of being afraid all the time. Uncertain. He's tired of feeling like his father needs him as much as he wishes his son was never born. He can't stand the loneliness anymore. Now, he shows some of what he is and he waits for their move. No hesitating and searching.

He lets his mask, perfected by years of pretending to be fine, fall just the time to point at the chair and say:

“This one is already taken.”

He's tired, yes, and he also doesn't make a habit of sitting on someone else's lap, no matter how intangible said lap is. They glance at the chair -but they can't _see_ \- and back at him.

He gives all of them an exhausted smile and wonders if his eyes under the mask are as dead as the ones fixing him from the other side of the table. Stiles gets up and goes to the teacher, tells the man he's sick. His pale face and shaking hands are enough to get him a free pass to the infirmary, but the teen goes back to his Jeep instead, damn the consequences. He drives to his home in a fog, finds a basket with chamomile and chocolate cake in front of his door.

Stiles prepares the infusion on autopilot, sits down at the kitchen table. He breaks down crying at the first bite of the cake, swallowing around a closed throat. He can't seem to stop the tears after that, but he stubbornly tries to eat anyway. The cake tastes just like the one his mother used to make.

 

**From dad:** _ High school called. Everything alright? _

Stiles stared at the text, answered a quick “yes”, then let his hand drop down next to his head on the bed. He watched in a daze the light on the ceiling turn, fade, become the yellow glow of street light occasionally broken by white flashes of cars' headlights.

Hours passed in a blur, his very awake body contradicting the exhausted emptiness of his brain. Tears drained him. His dad came home some times ago, didn't disturb him, probably assuming his son was sleeping. He lights his phone, the clock on the screen indicating 00:03am. At some point, Stiles feels his eyelids drop. He opens his eyes again and after he blinks back the stabbing caused by his phone light, he sees it's 5:56am.

He turns on his side, closes his eyes again. He dreams of gray shapes around him, dead eyes and people he knew surrounding him in silence. When he wakes up again, daylight is streaming in his room.

It's the knocks on his front door that woke him and makes his heart beat wildly in his chest, it's not the dream. It's just that, a dream, not even a nightmare. Not anymore.

He also didn't expect anyone, and his dad left for work early he knows. He's alone. Stiles gets up slowly and tries to look from his window, but there's no car in sight and the view of his door is obscured by the porch roof.

It could be Scott. If it is, there's no point in ignoring a guy that has sufficiently good hearing to know Stiles is home if the Jeep in the driveway isn't enough proof. If it's someone else, well, it's safe as any other time in his life.

Getting down the stairs and to the door feels like he's waiting for a sentence. His legs barely support his weight, no matter how many times he reasons with himself that whatever happens would happen whether he opens or not. So he puts his hand on the handle, takes as deep a breath as he can and unlocks the door to swing it open like ripping a band-aid off.

 

If front of him stand Scott and Derek Hale, and Stiles tries not to show his terror. They both seem to try and look as nonthreatening as possible, but maybe that's just a show for Binoculars.

“Um...hi!”, says Scott with an awkward smile and a wave of hand that makes Stiles flinch. The other teen notices and puts his hand down immediately. Derek seems already done with everything.

“If you want us to leave town, tell me now and go, okay? We'll be gone ASAP.”, Stiles declares tiredly. There's no need to drag this on forever.

Scott's eyes widen and he stammers, “We don't want you to leave! Well, not yet! I mean not at all!”

“We just want to talk.”, calmly interrupts Derek before Scott can make everything worse.

Stiles hesitates. He doesn't want to leave the safety of having Binoculars and Mrs Vony probably looking out their windows at what happens at the Stilinski's front door, but he doesn't want to have this kind of taxing emotional talk on his doorstep either.

He sighs and decides that if they want to try to kill him, they probably won't do it when there's witnesses knowing they came here. There's lots of other opportunities. And, really, there won't be no trying anyway, Stiles' powers are not physical in any way and his visitors look like they could rip his head off without breaking a sweat. They step inside the house after Stiles moved to let them come in.

“I'm Derek.”

“I-”, Stiles starts before realizing that saying he already knows won't be a point in his favor here. “I'm Stiles.”, he catches himself quickly, and Derek's eyebrow make a quick succession of rapid moves that Stiles can't interpret.

Scott gives the teen a big smile over his shoulder, going straight for the living room like he already knows his way into the house, and Stiles feels himself relax a little. Scott is the kind of guy that has calming effects on people apparently. The three of them sit, Derek and Scott at the edge of the couch, which means business, Stiles in the armchair, his back straight like a board because of the anticipation.

“What are you?”, demands Derek without beating around the bush. Stiles' not sure if he likes this direct approach or hates it. He's also not in any position to retorts he wants to know first. There's no negotiation when you're the one that invaded someone else's territory, no matter if you did it unknowingly or not.

“Well...um...”, he eloquently starts, “try to ignore the first image you'll have in mind when I tell you, okay? Bad representation and all?”, he continues with a wince, “So I- I'm a...I'm a Necromancer?” He winces at the question mark he put at the end, he really has more self-confidence than that usually.

The silence that follows is deafening. He waits for something, anything, screams, attacks, gasps. He gets blank looks instead.

“Like, an evil guy who does voodoo?”, Scott finally breaks the silence, more skepticism in his voice than shock, and Stiles almost takes offense on it. He sighs.

“I told you to ignore the- look, doesn't matter, I could be a badass evil raiser of the dead if I wanted to,” which, nice to point that out, Stiles, bright idea, “BUT!”, he quickly interjects to try and rectify himself, “I'm not. And voodoo, by the way, is not the same thing. Like at all.”

Derek makes another eyebrows dance, and it's starting to become really distracting for Stiles, while Scott just has a small amused smile. Apparently, Stiles managed to make it clear that he's not a threat, so there's that. A+ for the rambling.

“Why aren't you more afraid?”, Stiles asks in a small voice, still trying to figure if those guys will kick him out of town or not because of what he is.

“Do you want us to be?”, Derek counters. Suddenly, Stiles wonders if they're this calm because they've seen worse than a flailing kid that supposedly has the power to raise an army of death.

“No. No, I'm not, listen, I'm not here to do anything even remotely evil except maybe slap that Harris guy in the face,” and that has Scott snorting, “I just want to finish high school and maybe not have to move out again before college, you know?”

Scott and Derek look at each other then back at him.

“Okay,” the younger one starts with a shrug, more composed than at the beginning, almost like he's a different person altogether, “we'll have a lot to talk about, since you're on our territory, but you can be sure we won't force you to leave town or anything as long as you don't give us a reason to. But you seem like a genuinely nice guy, so...”

Stiles lets out a breath of relief, and all the tension that built up in the last days are not quite leaving him but he already feels his body relax in a way it hasn't been able to in some times.

“Thanks.”, he quietly says, looking both of them in the eyes hoping he can convey how grateful he is.

There's a beat of silence after that, and it's starting to become awkward. Derek clears his throat and pushes Scott lightly with his elbow.

“Right!”, Scott says, “maybe we can start now with the basics?”

The basics. It makes Stiles snort and earns him confused looks. He shrugs in response, he doesn't want to say  _ trust me, no one want to know the basics of being a Necromancer _ . He also figures that he can take his turn in asking questions.

“So, what are you all?” Scott glances at Derek who tilts his head a little to the side, like he's evaluating how complete of an answer Stiles can get from them. Whatever his decision is, Scott must pick it up somehow.

“Well, mostly werewolves.”, he says, “Isaac, Boyd, Derek and me. Then Malia's a werecoyote, Lydia's a Banshee, Kira a Kitsune and Allison is a badass human huntress.”

Stiles keeps himself from asking about the last one of them. From Scott's point of view, right now that's all there is.

“So, what, you're a Pack? That's what it's called, right? One of you is the Alpha then?”, Stiles lets out in a quick succession without waiting for the answers, his mind already three steps ahead from his mouth. It makes him almost forget he asked at all, so he's a bit surprised to get the answers.

“Yes.”, and it's Derek that curtly takes back the conversation, “And the Alpha is Scott.”

“How did you...”, Scott hesitates then, his voice cracking a bit on the last word, “how did you...you know? _Know_.”

Stiles is not surprised by this, he knew he would have to eventually explain what happened in class. He really doesn't want to though, but since it's his own fault for getting himself into the situation, he supposes he only can get on with it.

“Necromancers can also see the dead.” is all he says. The rest is for him only to know, because most people wouldn't bear the truth. God knows it almost broke him in the beginning. Still does some days.

“Oh. That makes...that makes sens, I suppose.”

“No it doesn't.”, Stiles laughs humorlessly, “But as much as your Pack, I guess. People assume seeing ghosts is a medium thing, but people really mixed a few things up, there. _We_ were what people called mediums, until some hunters decided that the bad actions of a few of us was condemning all of us. They made the name 'Necromancer' something vile in their _witch hunting_.”

Silence again. Brought by the bitterness in Stiles tone this time, and there's really not much to add to that. Human nature and all, and werewolves sure suffer from the same kind of discrimination. The difference being that they're not almost wiped out. The irony is that the misguided hunters didn't know what fate they put up upon themselves by killing Necromancers.

Stiles wishes his talking of  _ us _ could mean he actually knew the times he's talking about, before the massacres. But he was reborn with this power well after, and he knows about it from books. It doesn't stop him from feeling a bond to these people that should have been his.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what did you think? :)


	3. Jump scares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post earlier in the day but I fell asleep rather pathetically at 6pm haha
> 
> So, I don't know if I wait for the end of the story to tag the Necromancer!Stiles tiny little detail (because I don't want to spoil the big Chapter One Mystery™) or if I do it now, or never...? What do you think?
> 
> Anyway ; enjoy the new chapter :D

Stiles had felt a deep exhaustion after Derek and Scott had left, a mix of the anxious night from before and the roller coaster of emotions the day had been. His dad came home that night to a teen slumped in the couch looking at the wall over the television.

Stiles knew that he should be relieved, happy even, but he was both too tired to really feel anything and still processing everything. He had to share the news with his dad though.

So the Sheriff wakes up on Sunday, and is surprised to find himself a lot lighter than he had been in some times. Like his son, the weight of the fear and caution that they lived with for so long is not yet completely lifted. It would take time to trust their luck and the people that offered this newfound peace to them.

Stiles has an easy smile on his face that morning, playful even, and for once it doesn't have an edge of being forced. “So, since we're here for a bit apparently,” the teen starts, “maybe we could celebrate?”

“Yeah? What do you have in mind?”, asks the Sheriff slowly, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

“A week off work and school?”, Stiles says hopefully, and John shoots an unimpressed look at his son over his shoulder, the teen smiling with all his teeth like Simba in the Lion King.

“Not even in your dreams, son.” is the definite answer.

“Okay, so what about you take a week-end off so we go someplace cool?”

John sighs. It's not that it's a crazy idea, on the contrary, and it's been a long time since they went to relax somewhere. It's just that his son just used the door-in-the-face technique on him, and for something he would've agreed to in the first place. It's kind of sad.

“Where do you want to go, kiddo?”, the Sheriff asks the teen while sitting at the table to sip his coffee. He half listens to Stiles rambling, nodding or shaking his head along with the kid's ideas, and thought back on what happened the day before.

John had been mad at first, that his kid would value his life so little that he would let two strangers, evidently part of the supernatural, inside the house while alone. Worst of all had been the cold fear gripping his heart when he wondered if Stiles had done it because he didn't care anymore about what could happen to him.

Stiles revealed his nature to the two  _ werewolves _ , since that was apparently a thing. John had learned from the time his son started to have these powers to accept everything and anything having to do with the supernatural, but every once in a while he found himself still surprised. But, really, if Necromancers could be a thing, werewolves should have been one of the most obvious.

The Stilinskis have found themselves on McCall Pack land, which Scott had said was an official and really too pompous name to his own taste. The kid has invited Stiles to meet the rest of the Pack officially at school, and they would go from there. They got new members every now and then it seemed, and if all parties agreed it could be a thing.

So, best case scenario, Stiles would be part of a Pack. John has no real idea of what it implies in terms of responsibilities but he's glad his kid could at least make some friends. Some accepting friends. According to Stiles, they didn't even blink when he had said he's a Necromancer.

Still, the Sheriff can't help but be a little wary. For all these kids seem to be good, and it could be a front, the suspicious part of his brain tells him, they have no idea what caring about and taking care of Stiles entails. They've never seen him freak out, have entire days just sitting here with empty eyes or just refusing to open them at all. John's afraid if they ever find out they'll abandon him and break his kid for good.

So he's pretty determined to go and see at least the McCall and the Hale kids to have a talk and make sure they're as good as they pretend to be.

“So what do you think about going to the beach?”

And that takes him out of his head immediately. They haven't been to the see the ocean since Claudia's death. Seeing the look on his father's face, Stiles raises his hands in a placating gesture.

“Or not, I mean, whatever, we can-”

“Stiles.”, John interrupts. Stiles doesn't look at him but puts his hands down on the table. “We can go to the beach if you want. We'll go in two weeks, okay?”

The teen looks up quickly, a disbelieving and hopeful look on this face, then he smiles.

“You'll have to look for a hotel for the night yourself, though, kiddo. I won't have the time to do it myself.”

“Yeah! Yeah, no problem! I'll find an amazing one with cool stuff- and not too expensive.” he laughs quickly at the raised eyebrow.

“So, kid, I have a quick errand to run, and I'll be back home before you even notice I'm gone. What do you say I come back with what we need to make burgers?”

 

John quickly looks down at the paper in his hand and back up at the house he's parked in front of. It's the McCall house. Just after turning the corner of his own street, he had parked and called to see if he could meet anyone at short notice. Melissa McCall, Scott's mom, had immediately agreed and added that she would call Derek Hale to meet them.

John doesn't know much about them, but if they're willing to meet a total stranger on a Sunday minutes after he called, they can't be too bad. But then, he knows some criminals with a very good sense of hospitality.

The door to the house opens just after he's out of his car, and a woman approximately his age stands on the porch to greet him. She sounded nice and understanding on the phone, she looks even nicer and strong too. John takes an immediate liking to her.

“Welcome, Sheriff.”, she welcomes him with a smile and an extended hand.

“Thanks for receiving me so quickly,” he shakes her hand, “I must admit I was sure I would have to fall back on plan B. And please, call me John, no need to be so formal.”

“Call me Melissa, then,” she laughs softly as she steps to the side to let him in, “what was plan B?”

“Buy a damn toaster.”

She laughs more frankly and he smiles. He still has to go find one after this, because he can't take untoasted bread anymore.

They enter the living room, and Derek and Scott are already there talking on the couch, but they stop and get up. Scott has a big smile and Derek an air of business. Or maybe he's just grumpy. John turns down the coffee Melissa offers, since he took his breakfast less than an hour ago, and sits down in the armchair.

The Sheriff clears his throat. “So, I understand you came to meet my son yesterday.” Scott nods without interrupting him. “He gave me a detailed account of what's been said, and the first thing I want to do is thank you for your...handling of the situation. Most people would've kicked us out of here, no questions asked.”

Scott makes a sound that's either in self-conscious embarrassment at being thanked for something that seems so natural to him oi in shock that anybody would do something like that. Bless the kid.

“But I also wanted to talk to you myself,” John adds before anyone has time to start an exchange of politeness. “I know that the interested party here is Stiles himself, so it's really all up to him, but I'm still his dad and he's not eighteen for a few more months. I wanted to get the informations at the source about what staying in town involves, and if it happens what being a part of a Pack means.”

John takes a breath. “Secondly, I want to know if you're aware of what you're agreeing to on your part, what having Stiles around entails. I really don't want you bailing out the second my son becomes a burden to you, he has been through enough without having to deal with the consequences of being let down by the first friends he's made in years, just because of who he is.”

There's a silence after that. Scott's posture subtly change, and suddenly he's not a nervous teen, he's a leader ready for discussion.

“I'm going to be honest here,” he starts, “and say that it's the first time we're doing things this way. Our Pack first got together because of the circumstances, and we learned to get along with time, we were forced to. Kira, the most recent addition to the Pack, came here a little like you in the sense that they didn't know they were on someone else's territory, but they were here to deal with an issue just as we started to deal with the same problem. That's how we came together.

“So welcoming someone like this, without a crises to deal with, it's a bit new.” Scott chuckles lightly, running a hand through his hair. “We're going to do our best to make Stiles feel comfortable here though. Even if he's never part of the Pack I can promise you he can count on us. He's in our territory, officially now, so he's our responsibility and under our protection.”

Scott looks at Derek then. The older man leans with his elbows on his knees. John wonders if they agreed before hand about who would talk about what, or if they improvise.

“Pack,” Derek starts in a lower voice than Scott, “is a lot like family. It's a strong bond. You don't have to like everybody. You're here for each other, you trust them. If this trust grows between Stiles and us, the bond will grow with it. I won't lie and say there's no troubles around here, we had some pretty bad stuff happening, but the Pack is stable and that means the town's more quiet. If there's ever a fight, we don't send those who can't heal on the front lines unless they learned how to defend themselves and fight, like Allison.”

Derek stops there, looks up at the Sheriff then at Scott. The teen raises his eyebrows and his lips quirk up a little like he want to make a comment but refrains himself last second.

“And if the trouble comes _for_ Stiles?”, John asks. It's his turn to be honest, now that they made the first show of good faith. “Because it's happened in the past, it can happen again. What he is attracts supernatural and hunters alike, and the witches never come to the rescue.”

“The witches?”, Scott asks just as Derek says, “We'll help and protect him whatever happens. He's living on our territory, attacking humans or supernatural here is attacking us.”

John lets out a little breath. “Okay. Okay.”, he says. “I won't tell you in detail how Stiles is, because it would not be fair to him at all, but I will tell you this so you don't freak out: Stiles has bad days. So don't be surprised if...if he does weird things sometimes.”

He gets up to signify that he has nothing to add. Scott does the same.

“Well,” the teen says with a small smile to try and alleviate some of the heaviness, “we're all a little weird, so don't worry about that.”

John smiles back, refrains to say that he's a dad,  _he will always worry_ , and shakes Scott and Derek's hands. He feels a little weird talking to these boys as equals in authority over the town. 

Melissa accompanies him back to the door.

“You know, you can always come here to talk if you want, when our shifts are compatible.”, she offers. “And I could honestly do with a parent that knows what it's like to be a bystander with their kids in this- this scary world that I still don't entirely understand.”

She laughs but John senses the edge of fear and worry in her voice. He smiles.

“I would love to. It's hard to raise teenagers, right?”, he lamely jokes, but it makes her laugh more sincerely and he's a bit proud of himself.

They say goodbye and he get back into his car. He takes a few seconds to sit here and think about everything. He still can't really believe this is happening. He can't let himself project a future in this  town yet because only the possibility of doing so is already overwhelming. 

In the end, he gets back to his house without the damn toaster, and Stiles turns to his father with a comment about old age. John doesn't say anything about the second just before his kid realized he was home, starring at an empty space in front of the fridge looking like a lost child. He snarks something back, and tells him to get off his chair to put on some clothes so they go to the store together. It's the only way he knows how to deal with it anymore. The only way Stiles lets him.

 

 

Walking from his Jeep to school that Monday is as nerve wracking as it was the past two weeks, but for different reasons. He's not afraid of being discovered and hated, or not as much anyway. He's well aware that this fear will always stay with him.

No, the coldness he feels in his stomach, the one that kept him from eating much for breakfast, it's because he doesn't know what to do now that he knows about the Pack and the Pack knows about him. Scott didn't give him specifics, and specifics are what anyone with social anxiety needs. A chart, a step-by-step user manual.

If he sees Scott first, does he go and say hi? Or does he wait for the other teen to come to him first? If he sees any other member of the Pack first, what does he do? Wave from afar, approach, run away? Do they know about what happened this week-end? Are they all okay with what he is or maybe some of them don't want to have anything to do with him. What. Does. He. Do?

The best strategy in this kind of situation is the hide-and-look-at-your-feet one. You can always say you didn't see anyone, and it wouldn't be a lie.

Stiles thanks all the deities in the world when he's saved from his distress by Scott abruptly appearing behind his locker door.

“Dude!”, Stiles lets out in a breath, a hand on his heart, “You scared me to death! A little warning maybe next time?”

“Sorry,” Scott says with a sheepish smile, “I wanted to say hello before class starts. We're in the same one right now, I think?”

“Yeah. Yeah we are.”, and if Stiles is a little bewildered he tries not to show it too much. He still has trouble believing anyone would willingly befriend him.

Scott babbles on the way to class, and Stiles is so happy he doesn't miss one word of it. If less than five minutes, Stiles knows everything about Scott's love for the puppies he works with at the vet's office. For all his Alphaness, Scott stays a teen and it's a relaxing realization. Their chat is interrupted by the start of the class. It's a boring hour.

Stiles think “fuck how stupid I'll sound” when it's thankfully over and they are about to part ways, because he really needs to know: so before Scott has a chance to say “see you later”, Stiles asks, “When do we meet next?”, knowing that between now and their next shared class there's lunch. It's a way to know if he's supposed to eat with the Pack or not without making it sound like he's asking to.

“Lunch?”, Scott answers with a smile over his shoulder. It's so easily said that Stiles thinks that the giant puppy made of sunshine that Scott is didn't even think that Stiles eating alone today would be a possibility. It makes warmth spread in the teen's chest.

 

Lunch comes around. Stiles is still terrified when he turns to the room with his tray. He never walked as slowly as now, going to the table where the Pack is gathered without really looking at them.

“Hey, man!”, Scott calls, and Stiles gives a small smile and sighs in relief before sitting down. The others look at him with various degrees of welcome mixed with wariness. Boyd doesn't even turn his head Stiles' way.

“So, Necromancer.”, Lydia bluntly starts, “How does that work?”

Stiles clears his throat, fumbles with his water bottle. “What do you mean?”

“You said to Scott you could see and raise the dead,” the girl adds and there's a low rumble coming from the end of the table that must be Boyd's reaction to this statement, “what else can you do? How does it work?”

Stiles ignores Boyd, and he would have preferred the subject didn't come so soon on the table. He doesn't want to get into the specifics of raising the dead with people that would obviously be interested in the possibilities it would offer them. Heartbreak isn't his favorite meal at lunch time. He carefully doesn't glance at the chair with the ghost sitting on it. She really seems to follow them all around school, even if Stiles sense it's not where she died.

He also really has to remember what he saw of Lydia's grades and comments in the past two weeks to convince himself this is the genuine curiosity of someone with a need to know everything, and not an interrogation. Plus, she probably thinks about what that could teach her about her own abilities.

“Just that.”, he tries to hide his nervousness. He's not comfortable speaking about it, never really told his dad either. The man pieced things up from half truths and the time after Claudia's death when Stiles was...not in a good place. At all.

“Anyway, how did you all get together, if it's not too indiscreet?”, he asks instead in the hope of getting the conversation far away from him. It works, but Lydia's not fooled and looks at him with eyes that say that this is not over. Stiles nods her way, hoping she understands that he'll talk about this later. He can share some things with her, just, not now.

“Huh.”, Scott half laughs half hesitates. “Who wants to tell the story?”

“Oh, honey, but you're so good at telling it.”, shoots back Isaac with a charming smile and batting eyelashes. Scott glares at him.

“Well, you're the one that knows the whole story?”, tries Kira with an hesitant look on her face.

“Yeah,” Malia adds around the food in her mouth, “I want to know too. You guys never told me all of it.”

Scott sighs. “Um...Derek came into town last year, his crazy uncle bit me. Then Allison moved in with her family, and er...Lydia got bit by Peter too? But she didn't turn. There was Jackson too but he left for London. Isaac and Boyd were bit by Derek when he was the Alpha, but he healed his sister with it and I became the Alpha. And Kira moved here, like, six months ago?”

“You're terrible at telling stories.”, Isaac declares, making everybody snicker.

“Shut up, you're the one that asked me to.”, pouts Scott.

“You know what?”, interrupts Lydia, turning to Stiles, “I have a free period this afternoon that I'm pretty sure you share with me and I'm free after class. So what about I tell you everything?”

It's said with a tilt of the head and a smile, so she clearly caught Stiles offer. He swallows and nods. He'll still have the afternoon to think about what exactly he'll say to Lydia. Malia grumbles about never getting the story and Allison says she will tell her.

“So you weren't always the Alpha?”, Stiles turns back to Scott in the hope of escaping Lydia's calculating gaze.

“No, Peter was at first, then Derek, then me.”, the teen answers.

“Yeah, and Derek didn't take any pedagogy class, so it was not a picnic in the park.”, Isaac declares before biting into an apple. “But he's nicer now.”, he adds while chewing.

The rest of the lunch is mostly jokes flying around and talks about the afternoon classes. No one asks him anything else, and he's pretty grateful for it. Boyd doesn't say a word the whole time, and looks at Stiles for long minutes, making him pretty nervous. He guess he'll have to talk to the guy at some point too.

 

Lydia drops her bag loudly on the library table Stiles' sitting at, making him jump. He gives a reproachful look at the girl, wondering if their motto is 'jump scares and heart attacks'. Lydia levels his glare with an almighty indifference.

“So...”, she starts, and it's not an hesitation, it's a sign Stiles has to stop what he's doing to play a game of complete the sentence.

“So.”, he petulantly answers, then deflates and sighs. He sits back in his chair and looks at her. Banshee's don't have the same powers than Necromancers, obviously, but it's the same kind of hell. He supposes they ought to help each other out, and the first and only teacher he ever had, even if it was for less than a week, was a Banshee too.

“How long have you known you're a Banshee?”, he asks.

“Not long. Five months. But it started just after I got bit by Peter.”, she says suddenly serious and attentive.

“So you spent what, almost a year not knowing what you were?”, Stiles asks incredulously, and when Lydia nods he feels pretty bad for her. At least the Banshee that came to help him out a little did so not so long after his mom's death.

“Okay, look, here's the deal. I don't know much about Banshees, like I read about them so that's the kind of informations you probably already have.” Lydia nods at that. “But there's some stuff that are not in books because it's things people like us feel. And since I've been what I am longer than you've been what you are, I think can help you with these. I can tell you about my powers, too, and help you get clues about the extent of yours.”

He's way less confident about it than he lets show. He never told anyone before, that's not an easy habit to break. “In exchange, you tell me about the Pack, the town, everything I need to know to live here.”

Lydia seems to think about it, pursing her lips and assessing Stiles. “Deal,” she finally says, “lets take turns doing it. I'll start.”

Stiles takes a moment to consider what it would've been like to know this tornado of a girl before his mom died. He probably would've been head over heals for her. He can't wait to be friends with her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what did you think? Are you guys team Melissa/Sheriff? Because it's not really hinted in this story but I'm thinking about adding some when I edit the rest of the chapters *rubs chin*  
> Also, you don't have to but I'd like to play a game of getting-to-know-you with basic or weird questions at the end of each chapters! So, question 1, an obvious one! Where are you from, people? I'm from France so if you're from Europe you might know we host the Euro 2016 right now which...I'm not really interested in so...but...you know...
> 
> ps: the door in the face technique is a real thing from social psychology where you start by asking something big out of the person (here, taking the week off), to get them to agree to a smaller request (here taking a week-end trip) ; you can use it on kids or or to sell something or for whatever, and the opposite exists too it's call the foot in the door technique! You can look it up on wikipedia ^^   
> And I'm gonna stop rambling now ^^' You can come ramble at me on [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com) ;)


	4. What people want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to confess right now that I highly improvise the chapter titles...  
> Anyway, after an over emotional morning, here's the new chapter! Also, thanks so much for all the comments and kudos guys <3
> 
> IMPORTANT : There's a panic attack in this chapter! I'll update the tags, but I know I don't always check them every time I get to a new chapter of a story I'm following so...
> 
> Enjoy :)

Stiles closes the door of his house and leans on it for a few seconds.

“Rough day?”, his father makes him jump.

“Seriously, you all have to stop doing that!”, the teen exclaims. “No, pretty good actually. Just exhausting.”, he finishes more softly, running a hand down his face.

The Sheriff hums as he takes another sip of his beer and follows Stiles into the living room. His son sinks into the couch.

“You wouldn't believe the shit that happened around here, dad.”, he finally explains. “And I only had time for like, half of the story. Lydia's coming over in a few minutes to tell me the rest. And...”, he hesitates, “I thought I could help her with some of her Banshee's stuff, you know? Like Lorraine did for me a little?”

John nods, thinks back on the four days the woman stayed with them and the huge help this short time turned out to be. She just knocked on their door one day, looking like she escaped a psychiatric hospital, saying she sensed an unusual death and a pull to this house. She left just minutes before some cops knocked on the door about a escaped patient from a psychiatric hospital from...John frowns. Wasn't it Beacon Hills? Which at the time had been several miles away. 

“So, I'll tell you all about it when I have the whole story.”, Stiles announces as he gets up to open the front door. The Sheriff didn't even hear the knock. A small girl in a flowery dress comes in and John feels like he's passing an exam when she looks at him. Then she smiles and introduces herself.

“Hello, Sheriff, I'm Lydia Martin.”

John chuckles, “Nice to meet you, Lydia. Do you kids want anything to drink?”

“Um...I'll take care of that, dad.”, Stiles urgently says with wide eyes. Right. Parents out when teenagers have friends over.

“Okay, if you need anything, I'll be around.”, he finishes, exiting the living room. Stiles suddenly doesn't know what to do with himself. He gestures wildly to the kitchen, supposes it's best than taking an almost unknown girl into his room.

“You want a drink?”

“Is this thyme?”, Lydia asks, sitting down at the kitchen table and pointing at a small jar full of herbs on the counter. Stiles nods. “It's been a long time since I've had an infusion of it.”

“So, where where we?”, Stiles absently says while he puts the water to boil and prepares two mugs and a teapot. Stiles thinks back on the afternoon.

Lydia had started by retelling the events of the night Scott got bitten. He went into the woods one night, to search for his lost inhaler before his mom learned about it. He didn't want any trouble because of it, and the thing was pretty expensive. Plus, he wasn't supposed to take shortcuts through the woods to get home from school.

What he didn't know at the time was that the police was combing the Preserve for half a dead body, and he panicked when he saw the flashlights. He tried to get back home quickly but stumbled on something that turned out to be Laura Hale's body, funnily found his inhaler next to it, and got attacked and bit.

Melissa McCall, hearing someone come in the house in the middle of the night, got up and took her baseball bat only to find her son passed out and bleeding in the living room. She treated the wound herself when Scott refused to go to the hospital, arguing that they would go in the morning if it got worse.

As it turned out, the wound had disappeared in the morning, puzzling mother and son. At school that day, Scott got acquainted with his new super hearing and Allison. Also, he noticed a creepy standing guy looking at the school parking lot like it had insulted him personally.

Then came murders pinned on mountain lions, Scott's struggle with his urge to kill someone -his Alpha's call, he learned later- and young romance. Melissa helped Scott with control even when both of them didn't know what was really happening.

They learned about werewolves the night Derek unsurprisingly climbed into Scott's bedroom instead of knocking on the door.

(“Unsurprisingly?” Stiles had interrupted, “He does that a lot?”

“He did. Now he does it just to piss us off.”)

Melissa told Lydia later that she would regret all her life not taking a picture of Scott and Derek's faces when she barged into the room with the bat. Derek had look like a dear caught in headlights, a hand fisted in Scott's shirt, the teen pinned against the wall with a mix of teenage annoyance and pure terror on his face.

A lot of talking and werewolves' revelations later, Scott begrudgingly accepted Derek's help and the man grumpily agreed to run everything through Melissa. God knows what would've happened if those two had been left to their stubbornness. Both mother and teacher insisted that Scott stopped seeing Allison for the time being. Which, he did not.

Derek told Scott about the Argent business, Scott told Allison everything, Allison overheard her parents talking about her and decided she would make her own decisions and help her boyfriend out. Just then, her aunt Kate came back into town. Lydia got bit at the winter formal while Kate abducted Derek.

Since she didn't know her niece already knew everything she decided to teach her a few things, leading to Allison freeing Derek and imposing that they'd tell everything to her injured best friend.

A very good idea as it turned out, since after wandering the woods naked for two days, Lydia's description of her attacker leaded them to understand that the Alpha was Derek's uncle, Peter, gone comatose after the fire that killed his family and crazy after waking up. The killings were a revenge on the accomplices of the fire, and the grand finale would then be the murder of, drum rolls, Kate and her psychotic arsonist tendencies.

The story came to an end at the Hale house. Peter killed Kate, Derek killed Peter and became the Alpha with the help of Allison and -surprisingly- her father Chris Argent, Scott, and Lydia's Molotov cocktails.

 

Stiles puts the two mugs on the table before sitting.

“I just finished with Peter's death.”, Lydia answers.

“The end was a bit rushed, but good story telling. 10/10 would listen again.”

“Better than Scott's try anyway.”, Lydia laughs, “But it's your turn now. I feel like I closed up the first story arc, so...”

Stiles plays a little with the empty mug in front of him before estimating that the thyme should be infused by now. He takes the time to pour it to think about where to start. He's not ready for his origin story, so maybe he should begin with textbook stuff.

“Sugar or honey?”, he thinks to ask Lydia. She wants honey in it, like him, so he gets up and gets some.

“The smell takes me back to when I was a kid. My grandmother always drank this, so I had some every time I went to her lake house.”, Lydia quietly says, then adds with more force, “No change of subject.”

“Yeah, sorry.”, Stiles apologizes even if he's not the one that talked this time, “So...yeah. Where to start?”, Stiles chuckles nervously. He breathes in and out. And starts.

 

Dinner is quiet. Stiles seems happy but tired.

“You okay there, kid?”, John still asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles answers after a moment, “I supposed I'm just not used to be around people for so long, it's a bit exhausting. I'm happy but I need some alone time to get my batteries charged up.”

John chews for a second and looks closely at his son before breaking the silence again.

“You're going to invite Lydia again?”

Stiles hums. “She just finished telling me how her ex-boyfriend never told anyone Derek scratched him by accident and turned into a murderous lizard, and she had to stop halfway through so I'm anxiously waiting for the next chapter to know who's the one controlling him.”

Murderous lizard, John thinks, why not. Stiles continues, avoiding his gaze.

“And I started telling her about- um, what happens to people after she screams, you know?”

His dad clears his throat. “Yeah, I know.”

“So,” Stiles exclaims with a sudden smile, pushing his chair back to get up, “we'll get back to it tomorrow or whenever she can!”

 

Stiles parks his Jeep and gets out, waving Derek rapidly just as Isaac makes his way to him. Stiles wants to say something about Boyd avoiding him, but that would lead to a discussion he's not keen on having.

“So, Boyd's avoiding you.”, Isaac states, and Stiles almost face plants.

“Thanks, captain obvious, what would I have done without you?”, Stiles deadpans.

“Waited a lot more before talking to him, probably.” the other shoots back with a raised eyebrow.

“Is the eyebrow thing something Derek taught you all, or is it a coincidence?”

“I suppose it's the natural reaction of faces in general when you're around trying to change the subject.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “Fine. I'll talk with him today. Tell him to...meet me whenever.” he says before parting ways. It's probably not how you're supposed to people, asking the guy who avoids you to come talk to you, but whatever.

He runs into Lydia next. “Good talk yesterday, Stiles,” she says, “up to doing it again after school?”

“Yeah, meet me at my house. Maybe I'll be a little late, Isaac bullied me into talking to Boyd today so I don't know when the guy's going to come to rip my throat out yet.”

Lydia gets a book out of her locker and studies his face.

“What will you tell him?”, she asks with a cautious expression, probably wanting to protect her friend but understanding that Stiles' brashness now is more because he's afraid than because he's really upset.

“I don't-”, he sighs, runs a hand through his hair and looks away. “I don't know yet. I'll see what he wants to know.”

“Sorry.”, she answers with a quick tilt of her head, and then disappears in the crowd of students.

Stiles waits a few seconds then removes himself from the locker he's trying to merge with, thinking that being stuck in school containing teen stuffs would be a worse fate than the day ahead anyway.

Maybe it's the stress of wondering what Boyd will ask, because there's really only one thing people want to know, or maybe it's putting into words yesterday what Stiles never spoke out loud to anyone, but it's suddenly harder to ignore the gray spots in the hallways. How many students died here in the last few decades? Too damn much, is how many.

He can't focus on anything the teachers are saying, rubbing his head mechanically all morning and flinching away from sounds and lights.

Before he realizes what's happening, he's in the bathroom hunched over a sink trying to get his breathing under control. It's the moment Boyd chooses to appear beside him, but the guy just talks without touching Stiles until the teen can understand the words.

“Breathe with me, come on,” Boyd is saying, and when he notices Stiles eyes focusing on him he asks, “Can I touch you?” Stiles nods and there's a hand on his back and another taking his and placing it on a broad chest to feel the breaths.

Minutes pass, it's a blur, and then he's sitting down and Boyd's crouching in front of him with a blank expression.

“Is it because of me?”, he asks quietly but with an obvious guilt. Stiles swallows.

“No, not really, it's- it's everything, it's a bit overwhelming.”, and god he's so tired he could nap right there.

“Come on, let's get you home, I'll drive.”, Boyd says before getting up and helping the other do the same. He puts his hand in front of Stiles as they walk, palm up, and the teen considers playing stupid. But he's not supposed to drive in this state, so he puts his keys in it and only tells Boyd, “Careful, she grinds in second.”

They get to his home, and in front of the house there's a basket that he picks up muttering _how does she knows_ and thinking out loud that he really has to thank her and give her back her baskets at some point. He's starting to lack the space to add more. Boyd doesn't ask but raises one eyebrow and Stiles blinks rapidly trying to refrain from making a comment about it.

“Come on, take a chair. You want something to drink?”

Stiles tries to understand how he went from no friends to having two of them in his kitchen in two days. But he doesn't really know if Boyd's his friend or not, so the statistics are a bit screwed.

“No, thanks.”, the teen says and Stiles moves to make himself a tea. When it's ready he sits down, relieved to take the pressure off his trembling legs, and takes out the apple pie that's hidden under a towel.

“Want some? She makes the best stuff.”

“She?”, Boyd inquires as he nods.

“Mrs Vony, the neighbor. So, as much as I appreciate the company, I suppose you took me home to talk to me.”

“I took you home because you couldn't drive.”, comes the toneless answer. “But I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Thanks for, you know, helping me out with the panic attack,” Stiles adds before Boyd can continue. The other simply nods again.

“You can see her, can't you?”, Boyd finally asks after a silence. Stiles finishes to cut the last slice of the pie.

“Yeah,” he whispers, “yeah I can.” He puts down the knife and looks back up at Boyd who's starring at his hands.

“Can you...can you talk to her?” It's the first question Stiles expected, and he really, really doesn't want to answer it. He goes, as usual, for a half truth.

“No, I can't communicate. I just-”, he looks to the side for a second, and gets stuck there because of the ghost in his kitchen. Boyd clears his throat and Stiles comes back to the present, hoping he didn't space out for too long.

“What was her name?”, he asks.

“Erica.” The name is spoken with a reverence and a love that tears through Stiles heart. “Can you really raise the dead?” And that's the one he was dreading. It came later than he expected, though. Stiles looks down at the pie that he abandoned, and he's sure they won't have any appetite for it now.

“Not like you would want me to, no.”, he says with a broken voice, and doesn't look back at Boyd when he hears the sniffling. They stay like this for a few minutes. Stiles whispers “I'm sorry.”, and Boyd silently reaches for the knife and serves both of them. Stiles supposes it's the only way the teen can say he's not angry with him.

 

Stiles just closes the door after offering Boyd a ride, which the guy declined saying he needed to walk, when Lydia knocks. He opens the door again, and it's way too early for her to be out of school.

“Missed me that much?”, he asks, and Lydia huffs.

“I can miss a few classes. We were worried, Boyd texted Scott saying you were sick and he drove you home.”

She takes in his pale face and his drawn features. “If you make me some tea, I'll pick a movie. Where're the DVD's?”

Stiles blinks, then smiles as much as he can and points to the shelf next to the TV before he goes to make some more tea. He gets back to the menu of Princess Bride playing.

They don't talk, just sit together drinking and eating the rest of the pie, until the Sheriff comes home to his son asleep next to Lydia. She quietly leaves after talking with the man about the day, and John crouches next to Stiles' head.

He strokes his head tenderly, turns the TV off, and gets a blanket. He's not happy about his son having a panic attack, but he's deeply grateful he had someone with him. Things can't be perfect immediately, but it's at least half a good start.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? I hope I'm not messing up the characters haha Also, next chapter will finally have a real meeting between Stiles and Derek :) from there it's a bit of a slow burn I think ^-^
> 
> Also : what's the last movie/tv show you watched? I just started Blindspot, it's pretty interesting!


	5. His mind's a graveyard and your names are written on the stones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What is this chapter name, seriously?" I ask myself as I write it...
> 
> So, this chapter is a bit longer than the others I think and that's because I'm stupid and I decided to put two chapters in one...  
> Also, and that's a bit important for you guys that are following this story, in the already written story, the action started later in the story, but then I was like "maybe it's starting to get boring for the readers" and I had a brilliant idea (no) in the shower so I added a little something at the end of this chapter -> meaning I may take a bit longer to upload the next chapter since I need to rearrange some things...SORRY T.T
> 
> Anyway, thanks for the kudos and comments <3 I'll let you enjoy this!

Things are a bit less tense the next day, considering Boyd doesn't glare anymore, even if everyone is walking on eggshells around Stiles and trying not to let it show. The teen sits between Isaac and Malia, because they are the blunter ones. Apparently, the message is received, because ten minutes later they're all back to their normal selves.

“So we have a movie night this Friday, you wanna come?”, says Scott over Kira excitedly explaining Inception to an over-invested Malia. It takes a second for Stiles to understand that the question is directed at him.

“Uh...yes?”, he slowly answers, “What are we watching?”

And there's a sudden silence. “We never watch movies on movies night because last time it ended with a broken TV.”, replies Isaac calmly.

Stiles watches them all. “You can't be serious. You're serious. Are you serious?”

“Well, I tried to set up a system, but they didn't listen to me.”, Lydia huffs.

“Okay, what about this time we do a real movie night, and since it's Stiles' first we let him chose the movie?”, Kira suggests. They turn to Stiles and he swallows nervously.

“Only if you guys promise me I won't die a horrible death.”

Isaac puts his arm around Stiles' neck and whispers, “Only if you make us watch The Professional, I fucking hate this movie.”

“You say that because you cried.”, Malia declares while continuing to eat.

“Did he say he didn't want to watch The Professional?”, Allison asks from the other side of the table, “Because you totally cried.”, she laughs. Isaac growls playfully.

“What about Star Wars? Everybody loves Star Wars, right?”, Stiles offers with a smile.

“Never seen it!”, Scott answers around his fork, and Stiles gasps with a hand on his heart.

“Well it's decided, then. Star Wars it is!” Malia asks what it is and Kira starts to explain it to her.

Right next to Boyd, Erica turns her head towards Stiles and opens her mouth. She closes it again without a word, and he quickly looks away before anyone notices his starring into nothing. But Lydia gives him a knowing look, and Boyd a sad one.

 

The days that follow are quiet. Stiles can't say he's part of the Pack after three days, but it's amazing how fast he fell into place as their friend. He snarks with Isaac, talks movies with Kira, and it's like he's known Scott his whole life with how comfortable he feels around the guy.

He only sees Lydia on Thursday night, and they talk a lot. From the readings they've made in the past, which doesn't give much informations, they try to extrapolate what Lydia's powers can be.

“Maybe we could go ask Mrs Vony,” Stiles mumbles to himself, “but I don't know if she'll answer that kind of question. Do you know anybody who could have books or anything?” He says the last part out loud for Lydia.

“I went to see Deaton already, but he said he doesn't have anything that could be of any interest.”

Stiles pauses in his thinking, which he does sprawled on his bed with his legs up against the wall, and he twists his neck to look behind his head. “Deaton...like Scott's boss, the vet? He knows about you guys?”

Lydia doesn't even look up from the science magazine she's reading, not even pretending to go over the little information they have again. “Uh, yeah? Nobody told you?”

“Huh.”, Stiles answers thoughtfully, and goes back at staring at his ceiling. “Hey, what's the deal with the couples?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, Scott and Kira looking like lost puppies with their big eyes and Allison and Isaac looking like badasses?”

The sound of pages turning stops for a second. “They're idiots.”, Lydia huffs. “Allison and Scott were together before and so now they're afraid they're gonna hurt the other's feeling if they show up holding hands with someone else. They think it's complicated, when it's really not.”

“Okay, but they _are_ together, right? The puppies and the badasses?”

Lydia chuckles and hums. Stiles takes that as a yes. They stay silent for a few minutes. Stiles suddenly jerks upright, flails a little, and finally manages to get his legs over the edge of the bed and get in a sitting position with some dignity. Lydia looks at him curiously.

“Okay, okay. I have an idea. So you said at first you screamed without knowing why, and well now that you know you're a Banshee it's logical, right? And you sense death and you found most of the sacrifices when you had this...Darach in town? So, we already established that you can try to extend these feeling and physical clues you get, even if we don't know how yet, yeah?” He points at the board on his wall with every death Lydia sensed and predicted pinned down and a post-it on how she did it. They're at a dead end on how to make this power grow, but it's already something.

“But we didn't think of the, like, number one thing Banshees do.”

“Scream.”, Lydia says, eyes already glazed over as she's thinking about it too. “I did break glass with a scream once, and the wolves said it's not like a human screaming. It's more...it's like a shock wave, and it hurts their ears.”

“Right! So, what if you can increase the power of your screams and, I don't know, use them outside of when someone dies?”

Lydia smiles at the thought, nodding. “I'll have to try...but alone.”

“What? No! I want to help! I want to be here!”

“Stiles,”, Lydia interrupts the offended rant Stiles is already preparing with a reasonable voice. “If there's a chance my screams can have an effect like bursting eardrums or shattering glass, I will not risk having you around to be hurt if our theory is right.”

Stiles opens his mouth and closes it, moving his hand like his doing a silent speech before dropping it in defeat. “ _Fine_. But I want to know if you make any progress.” Lydia nods. “And I want to watch Hot Fuzz, eat ice cream, and know all about the love history of the Pack. I sense embarrassing stuff.”

They smile at each other evilly.

 

On Friday night, Stiles is waiting in his car in front of a big building that seems empty except for the top floor. There's light coming from the last window. He looks at his watch, curses under his breath.

He's half an hour early, because he was too anxious, so he told himself _better get ready in advance_ , and once he was ready he had nothing left to do. So he left thinking that he would get lost anyway so better go ahead and leave early. He didn't get lost.

He looks at his phone desperately, silently begging the device to make time move faster or find him an application that hadn't already bored him to death. He's so focused on the lack of anything to do that he jumps three feet up the air when there's a knock on his window.

He opens the door when he sees Derek's face on the other side of it.

“I'm really starting to get suspicious, you know?”, he says over the sound of his frantic heart in his ears. Derek frowns. “Every one in town is trying to give me a heart attack.” Stiles clarifies, but apparently it's not clearer.

“Why did you stay down here?”, Derek asks like Stiles didn't say anything.

“Uh...I was too early.”

Derek frowns more, if that's possible, and he presses his lips together. He gestures for Stiles to follow him and goes back inside the building.

The teen feels a bit like the character of Road to Eldorado when they have to climb the pyramid, meaning that getting to Derek's loft involves a lot of stairs and not enough breath. There's a glass of water in his hand before he even got the time to get himself back together and look around.

The apartment is big, with stairs in one corner and a lot of furnitures in dark colors. Some things feel out of place and Stiles supposes it's the personal touches from the rest of the Pack. The silence is starting to get awkward, so he swings from foot to foot while detailing the books on the shelf.

“You can sit, if you want.” Derek says from his couch, and he seems tense but takes the book on his coffee table. He doesn't read immediately though, looking at Stiles like a mystery to decipher. The teen gets over the couch and sits on the other end.

“You can ask.” he breaks the silence after a few more seconds of Derek not reading and them both looking at each other without knowing what to do with themselves.

“What.”

“You can ask, if you want. I already talked to Boyd, because it was needed, and to Lydia because she's, well, a Banshee. The others keep their curiosity under control. For now.”

“Can you tell?” Derek finally asks after a silence. “If we lost someone? If we're going to lose someone?”

Stiles studies the man besides him. In the books it's always in the eyes that the author places the emotions, the past to be read on the characters. But it's everywhere else too. It radiates from the person.

Derek is tense. Has a serious look on his face, a permanent scowl. Faint but dark circles under his eyes and a clenched up jaw. He sits as far as he can from Stiles and even leans a little backwards. Stiles knew it would be this question that the man would ask first. Not if he can bring people back. He doesn't have that much hope. He wants to know when he will lose someone else.

“Banshees predict death. I can only tell a few details of it. I don't sense it either when it happens. There's before, and there's after, that's all. I'm good at spotting dead things though.” He tilts his head to the side. “I can tell when there's been death around.”

They look each other in the eyes for a moment.

“Is there someone here?”, Derek tries to keep his voice strong but it comes out a little raw, a little trembling.

Stiles looks around, even if he already knows the answer. Derek lost a lot of people, but wherever they are now it's not in this loft. Sometimes they follow family around, sometimes they stay where they died or in a place that they spent a lot of time in. When enough time passes, they gather in cemeteries and crowd the places until all Stiles can see is a gray sea.

“No, not here.” and Derek closes his eyes in relief. He was afraid death would follow him even more literally than it has in the past.

“I'm sorry.”, the man eventually says, surprising Stiles.

“For what?”

“Asking you.”

And Stiles didn't expect that one. “It's okay, that you want to know.”, he replies after a bit, “If I don't want to, I won't answer.”

Derek nods, then gets back to the book he's been holding in his hand all this time. It's only a few minutes before Isaac gets in, hidden behind a huge box, cables trailing after him.

“We almost forgot that you don't own a TV, old man.” the newcomer declares, carefully putting down the box on the floor and getting busy on getting everything ready. Boyd comes in a few seconds later with bags of food in his hand.

“Oh, shit!”, Stiles exclaims, “I forgot my things in the-”

“I got it!” calls Scott from the door, holding up a basket with a cake and the Star Wars movies in it. “You forgot to lock you car, dude. But whatever's in this smelled so good I couldn't let it down there.”

“Thanks, man!”, Stiles takes the basket and goes to put it in the kitchen. By the time he gets back, the living room is a flurry of activity with the whole Pack setting food on the coffee table and plugging in the DVD player.

Derek stays right where he is on the couch with his book, raising his feet when someone needs to pass, his book when someone tries to steal it from him. Stiles smiles to see the man more relaxed. He's gorgeous now that he really looks at him.

The teen feels a bit awkward at first, being around all of them outside of lunch at school, but he's soon back at joking around. He sits next to Scott to have better access to the pop corn sitting on the teen's lap. They both laugh so much at the comments they make during the movies that they end up with pillows thrown in their faces.

 

Stiles gets a text the next morning just after waking up.

**From Lydia:** Meet us for breakfast at Scott's.

He doesn't have a choice apparently, he snorts. He gets up to put on some clothes and is out of the house less than ten minutes later.

While the others stayed at Derek's loft to sleep last night, he came home. First, he had the feeling he would really intrude if he stayed. Second, he really didn't want to stay awake all night, worried that if he closed his eyes he would have a nightmare and wake them all up in the middle of the night.

He parks in front of Scott's house. There's only two cars in the driveway, so he can't help but be a little nervous when he walks up to the door, feeling like maybe he got here in too much of a hurry. Again. 

Scott answers the door with a sleepy head and a soft crooked smile. “Hey, man. Come in!”

Stiles follows him to the kitchen, where there's only Kira, Lydia and Derek yet. Kira waves at him with a half asleep smile, Lydia doesn't look up from her coffee, and Derek looks like he's out to model for some magazine. He's the only one with Stiles that's not in pajamas.

“So, I see everyone's up and ready for the day!”, the teen laughs, making Derek snort in his mug. Scott smiles over his shoulder while he gets another mug out.

“Whaddya want to eat?”, he asks with a frown. There's nothing on the table except for the coffeepot.

“I don't know, what do you have?”, Stiles asks back, making Scott frown deeply and turn to Kira.

“Weren't we supposed to stop somewhere?”

“You were supposed to buy breakfast, that's why I came here with Derek.”, Lydia mumbles.

Kira and Scott look at each other with a deep sadness in their eyes, already grieving for the food they'll never eat. Derek sighs.

“I'll go.”, he offers, and Stiles gets up.

“I'll come with you to help carry stuff.” He's a guest after all, and he's starting to feel guilty for not asking if they needed anything before coming over.

They drive in silence for a few minutes. It's not uncomfortable per say, but it's the kind of silence where you would be comfortable if you were sure the other is too, so it makes you uncomfortable. Stiles search desperately in his head for a subject.

“So, you like Star Wars?”, is what comes to mind. He cringes a little internally.

“Yes.” And what is Stiles' supposed to do with that? He shuts up, is what he does, because Derek apparently appreciates the silence better. “Do you?” Or maybe he's just as socially awkward as Stiles.

“Well, yeah, you know. I brought the movie!”

“You did.”

Back to square one, except  _ now _ the silence is uncomfortable for real. Derek clears his throat.

“They told you, about- about what happened around here?”, he glances rapidly at Stiles, who turns a little in his seat to face Derek's profile.

“Lydia did, mostly. We have a mutual exchange of informations going on. She had fun cutting it in parts with cliffhangers, like some crazy show-runner.”

The driver chuckles. “I suppose it's better than crying about it.”

“I suppose.”, Stiles replies looking at the half smile on the corner of the man's lips. “There's some plot holes though, or maybe stuff she just doesn't want to talk about. Which,” he quickly adds, “I totally understand.”

“What did you tell her?”, Derek asks, glancing at the teen. “In exchange.”, he clarifies. Stiles goes back to watching the road. Derek can't see it, but they drive through a lot of ghosts.

“I told her about what I am. We've had some ideas on what she can do. We understand each other.” He looks at his hands wriggling together on his lap. He's saved from developing on this by Derek parking the car.

They both get out, decide what to buy and Stiles insists to pay for at least some of what they'll bring back. It's lighter than the conversation from before. The ride back is more quiet, with a few jokes and Derek commenting on some people they drive by. He has a dry humor that makes Stiles laughs.

When they get to Scott's house, everybody's there and cheering at the food. The first half of the teens are more awake than when Stiles and Derek left, the second half still a little sleepy. Allison has pillows mark on her face which is maybe one of the cutest things Stiles' ever seen. Isaac seems to think so, too, but he doesn't make a move in front of the rest, making Stiles and Lydia exchange a knowing look.

 

Stiles is alone on Sunday, because his dad changed his days to have the next week-end off. He starts to look up places to go and hotels, already excited about going out of town. It feels like forever since the Stilinskis had an easy enough mind to think about taking short holidays.

There's a sudden flash of memory in his head. He's four, maybe five, point is he's a small kid. He runned down the beach they went to on sunny spring days and got in the water. All he thought is that he was a big boy now, he could swim without the arm floats.

The only thing he heard as he tried to keep his head over the water but failed, is his mom's voice calling him by his long and complicated Polish name. The one she only used when she was mad, like the time she yelled at him for running away from her in a busy street. Now that he's a bit older, he thinks maybe she wasn't so much mad than worried.

His mom got him out of the water and cried a little, told him to never do that again. He didn't say a thing, too busy crying, but he agreed with all his little heart. She told him, running her hands frantically on his face, his hair, “What would I do without you, huh? I couldn't live if something happened to you!”

Before he realizes he's moved, Stiles is curled up in a ball in the corner of his room. He gets back to the present like this, sobbing loudly, pulling a little on his hairs like it could make him forget the feeling of her hands in it. He forces himself to stop, he doesn't want to pull them off and have his dad shaving his head again.

He doesn't know how long it is before he can get up the floor to at least get in his bed. When he opens his eyes again it's Monday, and he really can't get up. It's the moment she chooses to stand in front of his door, of course. Nothing will make her leave. All he can do is close his eyes tight, turn his back on her, and wait for the strength to move around her. His phone rings, once, twice, four or five times. He doesn't answer.

 

 

_֍_

 

 

 

It's around noon that there's a knock on the door. Minutes pass before there's the sound of the window opening, and Stiles knows who it is then, but he still can't get himself to really pay attention to the world around him so the information stays at the back of his mind.

He doesn't move when Derek sits down on the bed and makes it dip a little, or when the man puts a hand on his shoulder. He opens his mouth to answer when there's a “What happened?”, but no sound comes out and it feels like he became one of the countless ghosts he sees everyday.

“Is there someone here?”, is the next question, and Stiles manages a short nod, eyes still shut tight and breathing hard. “Is it- is it someone you know?”

“M- mo...m.”, Stiles gets out breathlessly after working over the word silently a few times.

The bed moves a little and Stiles supposes Derek's looking around the bedroom like he might see something if he tries hard enough.

“Come on, get up.”, Derek finally says, and when the teen shakes frantically his head, he adds, “You can keep your eyes closed, I'll guide you to the car.”

Stiles tries to breathe more deeply, gathering his strength. Then he rolls over, waits for the other to get up and sits, reaching blindly with his hand until Derek's takes it.

Despite his closed eyes, he can feel the cold when they come near her, and he recoils with a whimper. Derek stops, seems to understand because he makes Stiles turn a little and go around it. The trip down the stairs is not as difficult as the teen feared it would be. The hardest part is when they're outside the house and he's barefoot and disoriented.

Derek turns around to lock the front door, never letting go of Stiles hand, then seems to move around a little before they're back at making their way to the car. Stiles still hasn't opened his eyes. He _can't_.

The ground is a little cold, but there's soon the sound of a car door opening, and he's in. He has to let go of the hand he's holding now, and it almost makes him hyperventilate. He's anchorless and afraid and alone and- the hand is back in his.

“How did you know?”, whispers Stiles, clutching the hand, Derek making do when he has to change gears.

“School called your dad, your dad called Scott and Scott called me. They couldn't leave.” It sounds apologetic, but Stiles is grateful his dad didn't have to leave work just for him.

“Thanks.”

The car stops. “I have to get out of the car, but I'll be there before you even realize I'm gone, okay?”, Derek tries to reassure Stiles. It mostly works, if only because of the warning that delays the panic for a bit. There's hands on his feet, and he bends down to put on the shoes himself ; he's embarrassed enough as it is, and feels bad for making Derek take care of him like this.

They climb the stairs to the loft slowly. Stiles cries silently in a mix of frustration with himself and fear of having to open his eyes again. He knows it'll pass, eventually. They finally get to the top, the door opens in a screech and Stiles' sits heavily in the couch, panting because of the exertion and his breathing that's stayed at the edge of hyperventilation since the morning.

“Do you want something to drink or eat?”, comes Derek voice from in front of him, so he must be crouching. His hand tugs a little on Stiles' like he turns to look over his shoulder. “I found something on your porch, I think it's chamomile and a...”, there's a sniff, “Yogurt cake.”

“The hell is a yogurt cake?”, Stiles breathes a small laughs, then adds, “Witches.”, like Derek should answer “I know, right?”, but he doesn't get it.

“Witches?”, he asks instead, but Stiles shakes his head.

“Chamomile sounds good. It's calming.”

“And cake.”, Derek states, and Stiles hears the pointed look at his shaking free hand in the voice, so he doesn't argue. He'll be hungry once he feels a bit better anyway.

 

Stiles' roused by the sound of a voice talking.

“He's just waking up right now...yeah...yeah okay, sir.”

He opens his eyes to see Derek hanging up. “How long was I out?”, Stiles mumbles, trying to rub the sleep of his face. Derek looks at him with a trace of concern on his face, and Stiles suddenly remembers why he's here. The raise in his heartbeat is embarrassment and disappointment in himself, but there's a feeling at the back of his mind that he can't place.

“Couple of hours.”

The teen sighs, chooses to focus on something else. He looks around at the loft, his eyes falling on the computer with an open text document on the desk.

“Do you have a job?”, he asks, not turning to Derek for a couple of seconds, and when he does the man's only inches away from him. Stiles jumps.

“You all...”, he doesn't finish, pinching his lips in frustration while Derek raises an eyebrow.

“Your Pack name should be Jump Brows, I swear to god...”

“What?”, Derek blinks a couple of times, having trouble understanding where this comes from.

“Or Eye Scares!” Stiles snorts, turns to Derek again and throws his hands up, “Oh shut up, I just woke up! And it makes perfect sense, it's just you that's not following.” He gets up, paces a little, then falls back into the couch.

“I'm a bit...”, he rubs his forehead, trying to catch up with his brain, with everything that's happened. He wishes he could stop himself from feeling embarrassed for Derek finding him like this.

“It's okay.”, Derek says, cutting Stiles thoughts short for a second before they start again on all the reasons why it's not, “You're dad's going to be here in fifteen.”

“Thanks, for coming to get me,” he distractedly says, mind trying to get rid of the itch disturbing his thoughts.

“You already thanked me.” There a silence. “Do you want to talk about it?”, the man asks with an awkwardness that's not entirely hidden by his show of self-confidence. Stiles only shakes his head negatively, focusing immediately on the fact that he'll have to talk about it with his dad. He's really not looking forward to.

“What are you writing?”, Stiles asks to distract himself when he sees something that looks like an open text editor on the computer screen. He turns to look back a Derek and jumps a little at the furrowed brow. “Sorry! I mean, you don't have to tell me, I didn't want to be-”

“It's fine.” Derek sighs and runs a hand down his face. “I'm doing- I'm trying to write down what happened to my family.”

“Oh,” is all Stiles can say, and he doesn't know if he should drop it or if he can push the subject a little. “Do you...want to talk about it?”, he finally echoes Derek's words back. The man looks at him with eyes that mesmerize Stiles for a second. He's just about to have his answer, the wolf opening his mouth, when there's a know at the loft door.

 

The Sheriff thanks Derek profusely, trying to get through how profoundly grateful he is that Stiles wasn't alone in this. He doesn't say _this time_ , but it's pretty clear anyway. Derek has a strange look on his face, and Stiles almost doesn't want to analyze it in fear that it'll be pity, but it is in fact not that at all. Something more like wonder and sadness.

They're get to the car in silence, Stiles checking his phone to see he has a lot of texts from the Pack, asking what's wrong at first then wishing him to get well soon. He doesn't answer immediately, a bit too tired to think about socially appropriate answers, and he's a bit bitter about the fact that there's no getting well. He's not risking jeopardizing this friendship with some texts he would send in a bad state of mind. Plus, he's really grateful for their concern.

He's just finishing the last text, Lydia stating that they'll have a talk when he's feeling like it -well that would be _never_ , but it's Lydia so...-, when his dad takes a deep breath. Stiles hates what's coming.

“Was it- was it your mom?”, John asks, his voice cracking over the last word. Stiles only nods in response, but his dad catches the move from the corner of his eyes and takes a second to watch his son instead of the road. “Jesus, kid.”, he whispers, shaking his head after going back to looking in front of the car.

“I'm sorry...”, Stiles says so quiet his father almost misses it. He's sorry that he's the reason his dad has to _know_ that Claudia is still around, following them everywhere they move to. He's sorry that because of him there's no believing in heaven. He's sorry about everything, but he can't say the words anymore.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”, John replies forcefully. It's an argument they already had but he will never stop trying to get his kid to understand that. “Stiles, you have to- you have to let her go.” How many times will he have to say this?

“I can't.” How many times will he have to hear this? “I can't-”, the voice of his boy breaking and the unsaid words hanging over their heads. _I can't kill her twice._

 

Just before falling asleep, a thought hits Stiles with a violence that has him sitting straight up in bed and dialing a number in less than a second. He finally knows what the thing that bothered him all afternoon is.

“Stiles, what is it?” says a voice that's starting to be comfortingly familiar. It makes Stiles relax a fraction, but he's still frantic.

“There's something in the cemetery. Something big.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you like how I write the Pack? What do you think of Stiles and Derek real first conversation? The Sterek will build up slowly but surely mehehe!  
> Raise your hand if you're a cat person, wave it if you're a dog person! *raises hand* And if you're really not any of the two, tell me what's your fav pet! :)


	6. Silent words and unsaturated colors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late to update! I edited the chapter a first time, hated it, edited it again, and here it is!   
> Also, I spent the entire day yesterday reading Carry On and I couldn't drop the book, so there's that xD I'm sure anyone who has read it knows how awesome it is and will forgive me for being unable to put it down and write ;)
> 
> Anyway -> enjoy!

Stiles really doesn't want to go to school the next day, but then he also doesn't want to worry his dad more. First, there's the fact that with his freak out he's not really feeling up to a day of class, which is number one on the list of things that would send his father into full on parental panic.

Reason number two is the fact that he felt something. He felt something awful and big and weird, and it's not good. It can't be. He didn't tell his dad yet, and even if he's planning to do just that after school, it's the second time he lied to him. He thought the no secrecy thing would've become a second nature by now. Guess the need to save some worry from his father is starting to win.

He runs into Boyd and Isaac in the corridor on the way to his first class.

“You look great, dude.”, Isaac says, and when Stiles glares he adds, “I didn't know there was a Zombie Walk today.”

Boyd huffs and Stiles gives Isaac the finger.

“You have no sense of humor.”, the teen says with a grin.

“I'm laughing really hard in my head right now,”, Stiles answers, pointing a finger at his head, “I just don't have enough energy to externalize it.”

“See you at lunch, man.”, Boyd simply says to cut short at the friendly banter, and they leave him.

“So.”, Lydia says when she sits down next to him in their class, and Stiles doesn't even bother getting his head off the table.

“So.”, he mumbles. “Come by tonight after your...Pack...stuff, we can have tea and a talk. And it leaves me the rest of the day to take an eight hours nap. Did you sense something?” Stiles turns his head on the table so he can see Lydia at a low-angle.

“I- Maybe I should come before the meeting, we should talk about it. Do you still have thyme?”

“Yeah. You like it that much?”, Stiles asks back, blinking at her sleepily. He's exhausted by all the emotions, but once he clearly knew what was wrong last night, he couldn't get back to sleep. Every time he was on the edge of falling asleep, the feeling in his mind sprung to the front of his mind, stressing him and making him jerk awake.

“Yeah, I-”, she hesitates, tilting her head and looking at the ceiling from the corner of her eyes like it holds answers, “I don't know, I really feel like my grandmother's around when I drink it.”

“I can assure you she's not.”, Stiles says before he can hold it and Lydia looks at him sharply, but she's more curious than mad.

“How would you know if it's her or not?”

“Well I...I meant that there's no one around when we drink it. But I know what you mean, I guess?”, Stiles thinks about it as he straighten up in his chair, the teacher coming into the class at that moment.

“It makes me think a lot about the woman that helped me, in the beginning.” Lydia raises a questioning eyebrow. “Lorraine was drinking the stuff all the time.”, he clarifies and turns to the teacher that started talking. He misses the shock on Lydia's face.

“ _Lorraine_?”, she hisses under her breath. Stiles turns back to her.

“Yeah, why?”, he whispers with surprise in is voice, “You know her?”

“It's my _grandmother_!”, Lydia shoots back like he's an idiot and should have made the connection himself. Stiles only stares at her with his mouth open.

“Ms Martin, Mr Stilinski, something to share with the rest of us?”, the teacher interrupts their exchange of shocked looks, and both teens tune in to the lesson, but both minds are turning the information over and over in their heads.

 

“So what, you knew her grandmother?”, Malia asks at lunch.

“Yes, that's what we're saying since we got here.”, Lydia frustratingly shoots back before sending an apologetic look Malia's way. Stiles and her didn't have time to talk about it between classes, and she would've preferred to have this discussion later when no one was around to ask stupid question.

“Crazy, right?”, Stiles says around the fries in his mouth, a grin on his face. Lydia suspects him to be secretly very happy about this new trending topic, since it keeps all of them off his back about his absence the day before. Derek has been overly silent about it too, only talking about Stiles warning last night on the phone. She's too subtle to force Stiles to talk about it now if he doesn't want to. Isaac opens his mouth and she just knows she has to interrupt him.

“Are we doing another real-movie-night this Friday?”, she quickly asks without caring if she's too obvious.

“That would be cool, if we're done with the new...thing,” Scott hesitates but doesn't lose his excitement, “and the TV stayed there since someone was too lazy to carry it back to the cars.”

“It's _heavy_.”, Isaac complains just as Stiles says, “I can't guys, sorry, we have a beach trip coming up me and dad.”

“Dad and I.”, Malia interrupts the enthusiastic rant before it has a chance to start. Stiles blinks.

“What?”, he asks as Allison gives Malia a thumbs up.

“That sounds nice, dude.”, Scott says with sparkles in his eyes. Frankly, Stiles sometimes finds all this love a bit disturbing. There's no wonder the guy became a True Alpha. “Where're you going?”

Stiles gratefully jumps on the chance to talk their ears off about this as to keep them from asking questions. He's not even sure they'll really be going anywhere now that there's something serious going on, but for now it serves its purpose: being a distraction. He really hopes the “case” they have to solve is not as dramatic as the feeling that hasn't left him for a minute.

 

“We _are_ talking about it.”, Lydia declares before she even takes a step inside the Stilinski's house.

“I made thyme tea.”, Stiles sighs while letting her in. The rest of the school day passed way too slowly and way to quickly at the same time. Lydia already knows everything there is to know about Stiles powers, but he didn't get into detailed explanations on how it screwed him up.

He's willing to talk to her about it, if only because she's the one that can understand him the most. As it is, there's also the fact that apparently they're linked in more way than one, and they have more to talk about than Stiles' freak out. He sits down in front of her, and she pours them two mugs of tea.

He almost blanks out in the middle of serving the tea, but catches himself on time. Whatever there is in the cemetery, sensing it in his mind is starting to take a toll on his focus.

“What do we start with?”, he asks.

“What do you think about Derek?”, she asks back like he didn't say anything.

Stiles flails a little, sending drops of hot water around. “What? I'm sorry, but what? What's that has to do with anything?” Derek's nice, like the guy came to see what was wrong without hesitating, and he brought Stiles to his loft without questioning the teen's closed eyes or making him open them even after they got to his place.

Stiles owes him a great deal for all that. He didn't talk to him much, but he figures Derek's not a talker. More of a making-you-talk kind of guy, if Lydia's stories are true. Still, he never threw Stiles at any wall. Not that Stiles would mind, depending on the circumstances.

“He's nice.”, is what Stiles says of all this, carefully not thinking about walls. Lydia gives him a knowing look. “What do you want me to say? 'He has very pretty eyes'? I barely know him!”

“You barely know any of us, even me.”

“No, you, I know. We talked a lot. Okay, the rest of the Pack I'm not so familiar with, but I kinda got the idea. I didn't know you before, that's different.” He sees the problem with his reasoning without the need of Lydia's eyebrows. “Yeah, same with Derek, okay, but I don't know what you expect me to say. Or why you asked me at all!”

“No reason.”, she says with the teasing tone of someone that has a lot to say on the matter. “Let's talk about what happened yesterday then.”, she changes the subject before Stiles has time to react. He looks down at his steaming mug for a minute.

“Well, I woke up and...there she was!”, he says with a humorless laugh. Lydia doesn't ask who, she doesn't need to. She also doesn't ask what he did after seeing her, so she must have gotten some answers from Derek after all.

“Does it happen a lot?”

Stiles shrugs. “As often as panic attacks.”

“That's not an answer.”

He shrugs again, looks away. Thankfully, the kitchen is empty.

“She's around a lot, but not usually in the house. I put some simple wards up that a witch taught me, so they can't get in because I like to have somewhere to sit in my bedroom.”, he tries to say in a joking tone, but it comes out sad and bitter instead. “But if I think about her too much, it's like I call her and she can come in.”

Lydia hums, takes a sip of her tea.

“You know, they're going to ask at some point. You'll have to tell them, too.”

“Will I? I mean, they're better off not knowing. Look at my dad, it's-”, he lets out a heavy breath, rubs his eyes.

“You won't be able to avoid the question.”, Lydia states, and she's right. His dad never really asked because he already knew. Maybe Lorraine told him a few things too. But the Pack...

“So, your grandma, huh?”, Stiles says. They don't have to argue about talking to the others longer than that, because they both already know what's the answer.

“Yes, I thought about the timing and looked up some stuff before coming here. She went missing for a week and a half before walking back to Beacon Hills. Apparently they found her at her house, by the lake.”

“Crazy coincidence. She said she had felt an unusual...death. And she found me and my dad, who was struggling with his son slowly going crazy yelling about seeing his dead mother in his room. He had trouble believing it at first, but she helped a lot.”

“I wish she could've been here to help me too.”, Lydia whispers, and Stiles pours her more tea because there's really nothing to say to make that better.

 

The Sheriff comes back home early enough that Stiles can talk to him before leaving. He wasn't planning on going to the Pack meeting, as Lydia called it, but she argued that he was the one that gave the warning. She felt something too, but not as strongly, so they need him to give them more informations.

“Stiles. Lydia. You planning on going somewhere?”, John asks with a tired voice.

Stiles has a guilty look on his face. “Well, um. Yeah, we're going to Scott's house, because I...”, he hesitates, but his dad knows better than to prompt him back into finishing his sentence. The best it does is setting him off in a completely different direction. “I...felt...something?”, he finally says slowly, testing the waters with each word.

The Sheriff looks at him for a second and sighs. “You felt something.” It sounds defeated and definitive. It's also not a question, translates into something like 'of course, this is our life'. “Alright kids, give me five minutes to splash some water on my face and change into some more comfortable clothes and I'm coming.”

Soon, they're all in the Jeep -Stiles insisted- and getting close to the McCall house. A few cars are already in front of it, but not enough to have everybody here. According to Lydia, this kind of gathering includes Deaton the not-vet, but the man is out of town, the teens, Melissa who never took her eyes off the supernatural business since Scott got bitten even when she's feeling overwhelmed by it, and Chris Argent, Allison's dad. The later started being included only recently, because there were a lot of trust issues to work out.

The parents immediately assemble and start talking together, avoiding all subject having to do with their teenagers when half of them could overhear their complaining and exchange of advices. Still, it's clear that Melissa and the Sheriff already had a real talk together, but it's the first time he meets Argent.

Stiles joins Lydia over where the others are talking. They're still waiting for Kira, who's picking up Malia, and Derek.

“Yeah, but are they really real?”, Scott is asking.

Lydia interrupts the debate, acts like she's offended they didn't wait for her to impress them with her knowledge. “Who are you talking about?”

“Witches.”, Allison says, looking at the boys fondly like she finds them really cute when they're struggling with a question she already knows the answer of. She probably even started it and then acted like she had no idea what they were talking about.

“Oh, they are.”, Stiles states, making everyone stop to look at him. Allison looks a little betrayed. Stiles raises his hands defensively, puts them down when he realizes he's doing it. “What?”

Scott points at him with a big smile. “Oh but I _remember_ now! You talked about witches the first time we went to see you! Well, you mentioned them! So, what are they like?”

“Uh...”, Stiles hesitates, mouth hanging open. Obviously, that's the moment he chooses to space out. Not that it's really a choice. First, the feeling in his mind grows a little stronger, not dangerously so but when he finally got used to it and it became a background itch, any change is immediately noticeable.

Secondly, Erica just appears a little to the right of everybody, her body flickering in and out of existence, in and out of the unsaturated colors that means she has enough energy to be a little more present. It looks like it takes great effort for her to be here, and it  _does,_ Stiles can feel it in the way she's trying to draw an energy that's not there. 

She opens her mouth a few times, and Stiles whole being is focused on that, not hearing anything around him but the silence of her struggling to say something. Stiles learned from Lorraine that there's ways to protect yourself from your own power. He later learned from a witch how to put up walls between him and the dead so they wouldn't suck him dry of his own energy. It's those walls that he lets down now.

Erica suddenly becomes more alive. Blond hairs, bright red lips, even if the rest of her still seems washed out of colors. “He's hurt.”, she says at the same time as Stiles does. His blood runs cold, and it takes him a few seconds to get back to himself, rebuild his protection. Stumbles back, steadied by Scott strong hand on his back.

Everybody is looking at him like he holds all the answers. He doesn't. All he knows is that, “Derek is at the cemetery. He's hurt.”, and they all start to move immediately, swearing under their breaths. It's only Stiles that stays there, shocked, exhausted.

His dad is at his side then, and he's about to say that they can go home, they don't have to do this, but he doesn't get to. His son follows the Pack with a determination that will not be deterred. Just as he's about to get out of the house he turns back. Glances one last time at Erica, gray and lifeless, staying behind in the silence of ghosts. She doesn't even watch them leave.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so Erica spoke! Will she speak again? What will happen in the cemetery? Who knows? (me mahahaha)
> 
> What song are you listening to on a loop lately? The latest one I can't stop listening to is Glitter and Gold by Barns Courtney, because of the amazing Marvel video by Grable424 on youtube which you should definitely check it out!
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com) :)


	7. Can you wish on an unseen star?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Titles makes no sense, as usual...also, I just saw a British movie so my inner voice has a British accent, it's really weird
> 
> Bit of action in here, some hurt but not too much I think (this is the moment to tell you that you don't have to worry, in any case THIS IS NOT A DEATH FIC, but there will be hurt...again), feelings, all the good stuff I hope!   
> As always (might have forgotten in the precedent chapter, shame) thanks for the comments and kudos :) 
> 
> Here you go

They're all worried, it shows on their faces, their postures. They get into two separate cars, and everything seems too loud when there's actually no other sound than Scott calling Kira to tell her to meet them at the cemetery with Malia. It's like the rumbling of the car engine fills their ears to the point of driving them all mad.

Stiles is nervous. He looks at Allison driving, focused. She's the only one looking calm, but it's probably only thanks to her training. The teen can't see Scott on the passenger seat, he even has a hard time picturing the Alpha's face with a serious expression, preparing for the unknown, getting ready for battle.

He can't see Isaac either, Lydia between them stubbornly staring at the road. She takes Stiles hand in hers, though, squeezes it too tightly and it hurts a little. Stiles can tell that she senses it now, really senses it. Before, she had less than a feeling and more something along the lines of knowing you forgot something but can't say what.

Stiles doesn't really know what he's feeling. Anxious anticipation. Worry. Fear. Or is it the rest of the Pack's feelings that he absorbs, filling him because he's too numb to have his own emotions. Giving his energy drains him like that.

Whatever the answer is, whether these are his own or not, he can't get the image Derek off his mind. There's something there that he doesn't really understand and maybe Lydia knows. She always seems to know. Stiles doesn't want it to just be gratefulness. He also wants Derek alive to get the chance to figure it out.

They all jerk forward then hit the seats back when the tires squeal and the cars stop. Stiles looks around: it's a scenery that is both new and so very familiar. At some point, all graveyards look the same. What's unusual is the complete lack of any ghosts roaming the grounds. It's where they hang out the most.

The Pack hurries out of the cars, and Stiles' not as fast as they are to get out. It's his first battle like this, he's not trained to act fast like they are. Lydia stays in the middle of the group, Scott in the lead with Isaac and Boyd, Allison and Kira -who just arrived- taking the flanks and Malia the back with Chris.

Melissa stays by the cars. It's rare of her to come, her skills are of more use after, when there's wounds to stitch. With a Necromancer announcing one of their own is hurt, she thought maybe she should be there to help as soon as she could. The Sheriff is a good addition then, because he can stay back to protect her in case the thing they're hunting down comes their way. As much as a human can fight something that took down a werewolf anyway.

Stiles doesn't really know what to do, where he should go. He's frozen in place, tired, disturbed by the absence of the dead. Something pulls him forward after the Pack advancing in careful formation between the headstones. He looks at them but he's not really focused, taken in some kind of trance induced by the thing in his head, growing and growing until it's all he can feel, hear, see, superposed to the green grass.

Scott shouts, they run towards an unmoving form on the ground and Stiles blinks hard, keeps on advancing. He looks at Derek all bloody, stirring awake and moaning under his breath. He turns around when he senses something in his back. No one else can see the sudden appearance of an army of ghosts.

They collectively open their mouths and someone yells in alarm behind Stiles. A brown and black shape stalks towards them on all four. It's huge, it's growling, but for once Stiles is the only one that can't see it, because it's obscured by hundreds of deads.

People are running around Stiles who stands shell shocked, head tilted to the side, staring at what seems to be emptiness. A sound like the wind echoes in his ears when hundreds of mouths take a breath. Then it's an explosion of pain in the Necromancer's head, a shrilling noise drilling into his head, a crowd screaming for his help.

He can't do it, though, because it hurts too much and he falls to his knees, his head in his hands, and he doesn't hear himself screaming and screaming until he can't anymore. Lydia is crouched by his side, trying to help him, Derek is stumbling to get to him, the Pack doesn't look back because they're busy fighting off a giant hyena overpowering them even as they outnumber it.

When Stiles can't scream anymore, he pants, looks up to see Erica looking directly at him mouthing without a sound “Help us.”. He whispers something that someone might catch, and then he just. Lets go.

 

Stiles comes to in someone else's bed. For a second, he thinks he's in a new house after moving out again, but he really can't remember decorating this room like that. He can't remember ever decorating his room like this, and the last he knew his walls were painted blue. These one are in more golden colors.

He turns his head and there's his dad, looking at him intensely. Waiting for his son to really be back in his own head.

“Sorry about our beach plans,” is what he croaks out first. Maybe it's not the best start, probably not what's important right now in his father's mind, but dammit Stiles really thought that this time he wouldn't disappoint his dad and they could have that peace and quiet they always dreamed of.

“I don't care about the damn beach, Stiles.” There's something in his tone that both frightens the teen and reassures him. His dad still loves him despite everything -but the man kept loving him after he killed his own mom so what could be worse- but he also sounds a little dead inside. Shock, maybe, of whatever happened that Stiles can't quite remember yet. Or maybe he's just sick and tired of his life. Stiles did this. He turns his head away.

“Hey, no, you look at me son. You don't- you look at me.” John reaches to softly put his hand on his kid's cheek and turn his head back to him. There's tears in the boy's eyes, and it breaks his heart. He knows what Stiles is thinking right now, and whatever he does he just doesn't seem to manage to get things right.

“You and Lydia saved everybody today. You hear me, kiddo? _You_ did this. You saved them, you're a hero. A stupid self-sacrificing hero that worries his dad, but a hero all the same.”

Stiles sniffs. “I'm not a hero. I didn't do it on purpose, whatever happened it was- it was a reflex. It wasn't me.”

“Of course it was you. Come here, son.” John sits on the bed, his back to the wall, and scoops Stiles in his arms to hold him close against him. “This thing was way too strong, they told me they were being torn apart. And then I heard you-”, he sighs, can't finish this sentence because it was hard enough to hear that scream without having to retell it. “Then you stopped and instead I heard Lydia... _scream_. _”_

The thing died after that, but there's no need to go into the details of how Lydia's scream crushed it to an unrecognizable lump of meat and blood.

There's a knock on the door, Melissa waiting to know if she can come it and check on Stiles now that he's awake. Both Stilinskis nod, and she get to the other side of the bed, sits down facing the both of them. Stiles straightens up, wipes the tears from his cheeks.

“Okay, young man, how do you feel?”

“Um...tired? I guess?”, the teen answers, his voice a little cracked. “Thirsty, actually.”

Melissa gives him a glass of water he didn't notice in her hand, and he takes a grateful sip. “Any pain?”, she asks. Stiles takes a second to assess whatever damage there might be on him, but he doesn't feel anything except heavy and a little sore.

“No, just like I have a tension headache. In every muscles of my body.”

“Well, I'm no expert in Necromancy, but I'm going to assume it's the consequences of whatever you did back there,” she says with a nurse's smile, comforting. Stiles smiles back.

“Do you feel up to go downstairs?” the Sheriff says it like he would rather keep his son in bed for a week and a half. “You can talk with the others before we go home. They've been waiting for you to wake up to thank you.” Pacing like lions in a cage too, worried about the kid.

Stiles thinks about it. Then nods. He won't fall back asleep easily here anyway, without his pillow. So he might as well get this over with so he can go home to his own bed and sleep the week-end off. Or is there class tomorrow? School seems like a faraway concept that he doesn't really care about at the moment, and he doubts his dad will let him get out of the house before he got a few day's of rest at least.

The Pack is in the living room, minus Derek. It's the first thing Stiles notices, and it's how he realizes that he hasn't seen the guy since he was lying in a patch of grass stained by his own blood.

“You okay, dude?”, Scott asks from where he's standing next to Lydia, who's sitting in the couch with a steaming mug of something. She looks fine, just a little shaken.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm okay.”, Stiles whispers. “What about you?”

“We're...we're all fine. Come on, sit down, you look like hell.”

The teen sits next to Lydia, and they give each other a small smile. Team Death apparently saved the day, but they still feel like shit so they'll keep the mutual high fives for later. Stiles looks around at the others. Their clothes are a mess, but none of them looks injured.

Scott clears his throat. “So, what did you do back there? Do you- do you remember? After you...there were gray shapes flying around.”

There's a silence while Stiles thinks about it. He kinda remembers, yes. He couldn't say what attacked them, though.

“I...there was a lot of ghosts suddenly and they- they asked me to help. I gave them energy, that's what you saw. The gray shapes? That was the ghosts. After that, it's a blank.”

“Do they always look like that?”, Kira asks just as Scott says, “What do you mean 'gave them energy'?”

“No, they don't.”, Stiles answers Kira even if he passed out before he could see what they looked like, because if he can avoid the rest for now, he absolutely will. “Is Derek okay?”

The Alpha seems a little taken aback by the question, but nods. “He's resting upstairs. We called Deaton about this, he said the creature must have been a ghoul, they're rare and so powerful healing from their wounds takes more time than normal, and Derek was pretty badly hurt so...”

Stiles nods. He would like to go see for himself, but wouldn't it seem awkward? They don't really know each other enough to warrant the kind of worry that needs visual confirmation of being fine.

“A ghoul, huh?”, he says instead. He read a little about them when he learned about his powers, searched about creatures linked with death. But he stopped his research when it was clear they were becoming more of a morbid obsession than a healthy coping mechanism. “So the thing was eating corpses.”

“Yeah, what we don't understand is what it had to do with you and why a random ghost came by to tell you about Derek.”, Isaac says, slumped down in the armchair across from Stiles. The teen realizes suddenly that none of them have any idea. He doesn't know if he should tell them or not, about Erica.

Scott shrugs. “Deaton said ghouls don't simply eat dead bodies, they take their essence or something like that. He wasn't really clear on that point, but I suppose it hurts the souls or something? That's why they called Stiles for help?”

Stiles shudders, remembering their scream. “Yeah, it was hurting them.” He can only whisper the words, like speaking them too loud would somehow make the idea more unbearable. “Some of them were half gone, half- I gave them enough to fight back. They probably wouldn't have been able to kill it if it weren't for...”, he hesitates, glances at Lydia who refuses to look at him. He doesn't know what all this means to her, and he really wants some time alone with her to talk about it. On top of her being his friend, he owes her that much.

Stiles shakes his head, still a little out of it, puts every thoughts of Derek, half ghosts and pain out of his head for a minute. Obviously, he doesn't get to enjoy the peace and quiet.

Boyd must think of Erica, like he always seems to. “Isn't it good, though? That it made the ghosts disappear? Wouldn't they go...elsewhere? Move on?”

And Stiles sighs tiredly. He really, really doesn't want to have this conversation now. Or ever. “No, it doesn't work like that. When they 'move on', not even us Necromancers can say to where,” even if he highly doubts it's to some heaven. He has more of a theory involving some kind of reincarnation, a spiritual equivalent of the conservation of mass and _that's_ why he thinks hunters screwed up humanity's future, “and it requires a ritual.”

It didn't before, but that wasn't Boyd's question, was it? So he doesn't have to talk about it now. “Ghouls eat their...what Deaton called an essence, but you could say a soul or a spirit, whatever makes someone who he is and that stays linked to the body somehow after death. It hurts them, and it makes them disappear. Just vanish and be digested by some supernatural stomach.” Which supports his theory about redistribution. God, he's so tired he feels himself falling asleep mid-sentence.

Lydia must sense his exhaustion, because she turns to him. “You should go home and rest.” She gets up and must fetch his dad because the Sheriff is suddenly next to him. The man probably stayed close during the conversation, but Stiles wonders if he stopped paying attention at some point to make heart eyes at Melissa.

He's not the Sheriff's son for nothing, and he saw the way the two of them gravitated close before going to the cemetery. He also overheard them on the phone talking about meeting to talk about their kids. Which was absolutely a _date_ , and he puts talking to Scott about it on his list of things to do after sleeping for the next twenty-four hours. Or days. Whichever.

Stiles sways a bit on his feet, but he's soon saying his goodbyes. Before he knows it, he's in his bed and letting unconsciousness take him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: what do you think about Stiles seeing that Derek is alright with his own eyes? Because that's what you'll get ;) 
> 
> On another note, last fanfic you read (before this one obviously), in any fandom? I just read this one [The Witching Hour](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7021741) , amazing, fluffy and Sterek :D 
> 
> Anyway, hope you liked this chapter :)


	8. The sun starts to come out behind the clouds of your soul

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY I'M LATE!!   
> I felt really down tuesday, then awesome comment gave me life back :) then I realized I had to rewrite most of the chapter, wasn't happy about my first two tries, and yesterday night my computer crashed in the middle of a sentence and gave me a heart attack T.T luckily, I only lost that sentence I was writing because I'm so paranoid that I hit ctrl+s every five seconds xD 
> 
> IMPORTANT: there's angst at the beginning of the chapter, and a non-graphic very short mention of suicidal ideas, it's not frankly said but better be careful with this

Stiles is lying in bed, struggling to stay awake when he really doesn't want to sleep. He already feels like he wasted his Wednesday doing nothing under his father's watch. He still feels exhausted, but there's an energy deep inside him that he's both too tired to release and not tired enough to ignore entirely.

He also can't believe it's only the middle of the week. In only two days he had the biggest freak out of the year and the Pack took out a freaking ghoul. Stiles knows the others are not done with it yet, trying to understand where it came from, how and why.

According to Deaton, Scott told him, ghouls are vicious and hungry, extremely strong, but they're also rare in the U.S. and neither migratory or smart. The only reason why there could be a ghoul suddenly appearing in Beacon Hills would be because something forced it to move from her territory -probably a place with a high death rate- and that's something to worry about.

Still, it's a good thing they dealt with the creature so quickly, because a day later and the thing would have eaten half the cemetery.

Stiles runs over all this in his mind, trying to muster up some adrenaline to keep him from closing his eyes definitely for the night. He thinks back on the only thing his dad allowed him to do today that was not lying and watching TV: taking a phone call from Scott, and then Lydia.

They had talked about everything that's happened in details, from Stiles suddenly collapsing to the surge of death Lydia sensed that made her scream. It was probably due to Stiles giving his energy to the ghosts, making them be more tangible and so allowing Lydia to feel them.

She was still a bit shaken about it, but even more resolute to go out in the Preserve and work on her powers. To her friend's utter frustration, she still didn't want anyone with her there, the image of the dead ghoul still burned in her mind's eye.

Stiles jumps when he hears a knock on his window. He straightens in his bed, finally feeling a bit more awake, and goes to open up. He's not particularly surprised to see Derek unfolding his body inside the teen's bedroom, more amused about it.

“Back on you feet, huh?”, he doesn't bother to whisper, his dad has the late shift since he stayed home to keep an eye on his kid during the day.

“Back on yours. Kind of.”, Derek deadpans, earning his a fake laugh from Stiles. “You look tired.”, the man says more softly. Stiles wants to say to same about him, but Derek is far from looking tired or like he was badly injured the day before. The human feels relief washing over him before anger takes its place.

“You look like you could be on the cover of- you _idiot_ you could've- you such a- stupidwolf!”, Stiles hisses, poking Derek in the chest while the man's eyes go comically wide. Then the wolf take hold of his wrist before he can hit him again, face hesitating between a smirk and concern.

“Hey, calm down, Stiles!”, and Stiles lets his arm go lax in Derek's hand, more out of exhaustion than because he ran out of anger. The teen sighs.

“You could have died, what were you doing out there alone?”, he asks in a whisper, like he's pleading even if he doesn't really understand for what.

“I didn't plan on it, if that's what you're asking. I saw something move when I drove by and just wanted to take a look.”

“Still stupid.”

“I know.”

Like that, the fight is out of Stiles, but the worry and anxiety are still making his stomach churn and his heart pound a little fast in his chest.

“Don't you care? You risk your life like that, and it even made Erica find the energy to come to me and tell me you were hurt.” Derek's free hand balls into a fist, but Stiles doesn't stop to think that none of the Pack knows about Erica's role in yesterday, except for Lydia.

“Everybody cares, would be devastated if you died. Don't you care about your own life?”, he tiredly asks without looking at Derek. He frees his hand from the man's grip, sits back on his bed and feels the mattress dip beside him.

“I-”, Derek starts, sighs deeply. “It's not that I don't care. It's...for so long death felt like...something I didn't deserve and deserved at the same time, does that make sense? I care that it'll hurt the Pack, even if I don't always believe it, I'm just not afraid of it. It makes me reckless and stupid sometimes.”, he chuckles humorlessly at the end, but sobers up quickly and lets the silence fall back between them.

Stiles breaks it after a few seconds, looking at Derek's profile next to him. “You should.” The man turns to him in question. “I don't- I don't know what it's like to fight like that. Take a bullet, bleed and...the only fight I know is against myself, and it's an enemy that gets up again and again no matter how many times you put him to the ground. The only way to win is to shut him up, to just- just kill him.”

Derek inhales sharply but doesn't say anything. Stiles keeps going, staring at the wall on the other side of his room, vision starting to get blurry. “I don't know why I'm saying this, it's not even the point here. The point is that I know what it is to sometimes just want to make him shut up, so I understand, I really do. But what I also know is that  _you should_ be afraid. It's not peace you'll find on the other side, not seeing your family again and be with them for all eternity. It's  _nothing_ that you'll find, and rare moments of lucidity where all you can do is realize you're stuck between two plans of existence with the rest of the dead, before the emptiness takes you again.”

“What are you saying?”, Derek whispers. Stiles looks at him again, smiles sadly.

“I'm saying that they can't talk, Derek. They can't do anything, they're empty. Holding on the form they had in life because of the little energy they have left from us Necromancers, but they're just shells. And sometimes they have enough strength to get a little life back and talk, but it's worse, it's worse because eventually they go back to being empty and they come back from it less and less and I'm- I'm _surrounded_ by them wherever I go and I want to give her the rest she deserves but I _can't_ , I just...can't.”

Stiles is shaking and crying by the end of it. Derek seems to hesitate a second, but then puts his arms around the teen and holds him. “I know, I know.”, he says, doesn't ask who the teen is talking about, and all Stiles can do is fist his hands in Derek's shirt and whimper, “I just want it to stop hurting.”

Derek shushes him softly, holds him until Stiles finishes exhausting himself and slips into sleep without realizing it.

 

Stiles wakes up just before dawn, feels lighter than he has in years. It doesn't mean the weight he carries in him is gone, but it's like it rained inside of him and some of the pain washed out.

He turns in his bad to face his room and freezes. In his desk chair, there's Derek, head thrown back, mouth hanging slightly open, hands crossed on his stomach. The teen smiles and hides his head in his pillow. When he looks back up, Derek is awake and looking at him like he was never asleep at all.

“Do you want to pretend this never happened, or will you stay for breakfast?”, Stiles asks, completely aware and proud of the innuendo.

“It's not breakfast for a few hours.”, Derek answers with an amused twitch of his eyebrows. He takes a more serious expression. “Feeling any better?”

Stiles sits up. “A bit, yeah. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“I hardly did anything.”

Silence falls back because Stiles doesn't really know how to show Derek just how helpful he's been. The teen has been able to express things he didn't even say to Lydia.

“When I'm better, I'll help all of them, you know? I will, I try to do a ritual a semester at least, even if it's not enough, and that's not counting the witches. If I need to, I'll spend a year doing one a month, until they're all where they truly deserve to be, wherever that can be.”

“A ritual?”

“To help them move on. The dead. Erica, your family, whoever the Pack lost, I'll help them.”

They look at each other in the eyes for a few seconds, Stiles with determination and Derek with a raw openness. Ever since Stiles came by and revealed his nature, revealed that he could see ghosts, Derek wondered. Are they still here, could he talk to them, really talk instead of accessing his mom's memories through her claws?

“How can you be so sure they're still around?” Stiles already said the dead are around, ghosts without a voice. He sees his mom, he saw Erica. But he never said anything about the Hales.

“That's the thing, Derek. They can't leave. They can't ever leave.”

 

The front door opens and closes a few hours later. Just in time for Stiles to come down running and tell his dad that Scott has new informations on the ghoul and wants them to meet at his house.

“Don't they have school?”, the Sheriff sighs, grabbing the keys he just had time to put down before his son barged into the hallway. Stiles stops dead in his tracks, turns a wide smile his way and shrugs.

That's how John finds himself driving to the McCall house. He glances at his kid in the passenger seat, notices how he's slumped down, his head leaning on the window.

“Did you sleep at all last night?” Maybe he should have taken more time to be at home after what happened, make sure the kid rests correctly _at night_.

“A bit.”, Stiles answers vaguely, and the Sheriff knows him. There's something he isn't telling him. He opens his mouth to pry, but a look in the rear-view mirror has the thought out of his head as fast as it came.

“Stiles. Call Scott, someone's following us.”, he urgently tells his son. Stiles shoots up in his seat in less than a second, fumbles until he can take his phone out of his pocket and dials Scott immediately while the Sheriff starts to take random turns, careful to stay on frequented roads.

“Scott?”, he hears Stiles say, but then focuses too much on the road and the car tailing them to really listen to this half of the conversation. It takes only a minute for the teen to hang up.

“He says it's probably the hunters Chris Argent found out about. They think they're the ones that sent the ghoul here. We're supposed to drive towards his house, they'll meet us on the road so we can try to intimidate them into dropping whatever they're trying to do.”

John nods and takes a sharp turn without announcing it. Five minutes later, there's a black Camaro between them and the other car. A few seconds later it's a black SUV soon followed by a bike with the unmistakable form of Scott on it. He waves at them, and then accelerate to be in front of them an lead the way. When they pull up in front of a building in the residential part of town, the hunters are nowhere to be found. The other cars pull up next to the Stilinskis and the rest of the Pack surrounds them.

“Are you okay?”, Scott asks, his helmet under his arm. Derek hangs back and smiles at Stiles overwhelmed expression. The teen's not used to be the center or that much concern. Or, well, coming from that many people.

“Yeah, yeah, it's not like they did anything except give us a good scare.”

Chris Argent motions to the Pack to follow him inside the building. He opens the door of his apartment, and they gather in a study with a big desk but they're all too keyed up to sit in any of the three chairs there.

“So, I placed a few phone calls.”, Chris says abruptly. “There's a family tacking down one of their own gone rogue. They have a different code, but they wouldn't tell me more about it, though I can only guess it has something to do with Necromancers.” He looks at Stiles, and the teen shrugs but he supposes that the hunter is talking about the Sorgenttos. He won't tell anything about it though, if they don't want to reveal anything themselves. “All they could tell me was that they've been looking for him for a while, and that he was headed west.”

The Sheriff is impressed by Chris efficiency. “So they're the ones that brought the ghoul here? For what purpose?”, he asks.

Scott crosses his arms, takes a step. “We think they wanted to spot out Stiles, make him reveal himself. Apparently there's a few cases of what the authorities thought were desecrations in some town cemeteries. There's a missing kid around the same time, it stands out because it's a quiet area so there's a high chance this guy has something to do with it.”

“Okay, so what do we do?”, Stiles asks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? Is the Sterek building up alright? I deleted a bit where Stiles learned more about Derek, so I'll try not to forget to put it in the next chapters somewhere e.e
> 
> Weird question of the day: are you a barefoot person, or a flip-flop person? I used to go barefoot everywhere, but then my cat had a period of randomly puking at night, so I figured better be safe (and that was the TMI story of the day haha)


	9. The first day of losing someone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so, beware, THIS IS SUPER ANGSTY!   
> There's also some action, mild non-graphic hurt, and some things will be painfully explained. Don't hate me. 
> 
> Title is inspired by Doctor Who, "It’s funny. The day you lose someone isn’t the worst. At least you’ve got something to do. It’s all the days they stay dead.", because it ripped my heart out so I had to use it. *shrugs* What can you do?

The attack is brutal. The Sheriff is gone with Chris to pick up Melissa from work, the idea being to avoid leaving any of them alone at any time. Stiles can't help but be glad that the human parents are out of the McCall house, that his very human father is not here to be hurt. Given how everything is going, having the Sheriff, a seasoned hunter or a trained nurse with them would make no difference anyway.

The teens and Derek were all trying to relax despite the threat. Stiles was thinking back on the morning, when he woke to the man still in his bedroom. His heart flutters when he thinks about it, the way they talked in hushed tones even though they were alone in the house, all the things Derek told him about his family. Stiles still hadn't processed all of it, didn't have the time to, but once all this is over, he thought, he would.

Except now he's not sure all this will end in a positive way for him, and maybe he will never have the time to think about it. He's glancing at Derek when every wolf in the room stiffen. Scott opens his mouth to say something, give a warning, but before he has time to make any sound at all, a window shatters and there's the loud thump of something heavy hitting the floor. Thick smoke fills up the living room in seconds.

“C-cover your mouth. O- Out- side!”, the Alpha manages to shout between his hacking. Malia is already in the backyard, holding the door open for everybody to exit to house and get to fresh air. The weres sway and stumble like they're drunk, Kira blinks rapidly and extend a hand like she can't see correctly. The sky has this shade of purple fading into deep blue that announces the end of the day, that's what Stiles has time to think before the hunters surround them.

There's a second of nothing, anticipation, slow-motion. Like a coin being thrown up in the air, that small time where it reaches the highest point of its trajectory. Turns. You wait. Think it will never......And the coin falls back down for you to catch.

A rain of bullets falls on them, humans and creatures alike. There is no warning, no ultimatum, no intention of giving them the usual pitch of “give us what we want or.” They just fire at them.

This kids have fought things from a Kanima to Youkai, from Alpha Pack to an evil druid. But they can't do anything but try their best to shield the ones among them that don't have quick healing abilities. They're drugged up on whatever that smoke was, and they can't see straight. Can't fight back. Stiles doesn't see anything, but the shots seem to avoid his general area. It seems logical.

He's so afraid he can only grip Derek's shirt in his hand, close his eyes and try to ignore the sounds the others make. Lydia doesn't scream, so no one is dying. Then she screams, but it's not a Banshee's shriek, it sounds like she's hurt.

Stiles doesn't notice the silence at first, his ears ringing, breathing resonating inside his head. Then the shirt gets ripped away from his fingers and the darkness and safety surrounding him vanishes, he can hear Derek roaring as he is the last one standing to try and fight off the hunters.

Stiles opens his eyes to look around at an exit route, on the edge of hyperventilation when he sees everybody down. They're moving and groaning, no black blood oozing from their wounds meaning it's not wolfsbane.

They'll heal. It's terrifying to know they could have been dead as easy as that. Stiles can't help but wonder why that is. Lydia is panting, clutching at her leg, but she's alive. She's alive, they all are. That's all Stiles can think about before darkness overtakes him.

 

Stiles fights to open his eyes. He's pulled back under.

“ _They died in the fire. Almost all of them.”, Derek says, looking down at his hands open palm up on his knees, “Laura was with me at the time. Then we found Peter. I- I learned that Cora was still alive when the Alpha Pack came, but she wanted to go back to South America and I...just couldn't stay there. We talk everyday, but we will never be as close as we could have been. It's still good to know that I have some family left, and that no matter the distance we will always have each other's love.”_

_Stiles doesn't say anything. Derek sighs and looks up, but still not at Stiles. “It's my fault, all of it, I-”, and his voice cracks then. He tries to keep going, he really does. So the teen puts a hand on his shoulder._

“ _It's okay, you don't have to talk about all of it now. There's time. I understand.” He understands not being able to let go of those you lost, feeling like you would be a monster to forget them when you're the one responsible for their deaths. Clutching that guilt as close to yourself as you can because attached to it there's their ghosts._

_He knows that whatever the story behind Derek's sense of culpability is, he would tell the man that it was not his fault and mean it. He would love to be able to do the same for himself, or believe his dad when he says it. Knowing how hard it is to believe these words, he doesn't say them._

“ _I'm afraid of letting the Pack get too close to me.”, he whispers instead, “Something bad will happen, and someone will jump in front of the danger when it comes for me, and...” and, and, and, never ending. “I would rather die, than having to watch another familiar face join the ranks of the ghosts haunting me. I don't want anyone to take that choice from me ever again.”_

_There's a silence. Derek looks at him now, searches his face for something._

“ _What do you mean, take it away from you?”_

_Stiles looks sadly into those eyes that saw the same suffering as him. He shrugs, smiles. He doesn't want to talk about this, the words escaped him by accident. He needs to talk about this._

 

Stiles' eyes flutters, but he's still held back in his mind by whatever drug they gave him. He struggles to wake up, because he senses the direction his memories are taking. He doesn't want to. He doesn't want. He-

_He's ten and he's ill. So ill. He's dying. He's so young but he understands. He says 'mommy, am I dying?' and she smiles at him sadly. She won't tell him anything, his dad won't tell him anything except reassuring words, but a child has a way to_ know.  _So he knows she has been crying, he knows his parents hold each other at night and cry cry cry._

_They won't tell him because of how afraid they are that it'll make it too real, it'll make the hope die long before their son. They won't tell him how afraid they are because they think it'll do him no good, but god does he know. He's terrified. He doesn't want to die._

_And one morning, she comes into his room and she says, 'It's gonna be okay.', brushing his hair out of his feverish eyes. She used to say 'Courage is not the act. Courage is having the strength to do what has to be done.' Stiles knows, as all child always know even when we try our hardest to keep things from them, that his mother is afraid. Later he will think that she was terrified, fear of dying eating at her, but she did what had to be done._

Stiles finally wakes up. His memory dreams fade back until he can barely remember what they were about. All he knows is the deep ache in his heart, the tension in his jaw, the shaking of his hands. The pressure behind his eyes that tears don't alleviate. All he knows is that his mom died, and it's because of him. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Youkai are Japanese weird creatures (like, you know, the summoning circle with kanjis? I had all this planned since the beginning, I'm a genius author hahahahahahahaha), and believe it or not I spent a lot of time trying to decide which word would be best to use...and I'm still not sure about it...  
> Also, the bit about a child having a way to know things? This is something real and that is very important to me, because there's a whole lot of cases of kids replaying family secrets patterns while knowing nothing about it. It's a very personal opinion and not everybody can agree on it, it's okay, but I do believe it's best to tell your kids everything, choosing the words carefully of course.   
> WOW sorry, rant over! So, question of the chapter: are you learning other languages, and if yes, which ones? I learned English (more thanks to stupid websites than school tbh), and I'm trying my best to learn Japanese :)


	10. Not an evil monologue kind of guy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally had a good title planned, but I lost it T.T
> 
> THERE WILL BE HURT in this chapter, though in my opinion it's still pretty mild! Another thing, there's a little swearing in this chapter because in this kind of situation, who would not swear? 
> 
> Allons-y!

Stiles is laying down on a camp bed with a surprisingly comfortable mattress. He takes a few seconds to think back on what happened, and how he got in a room with no windows and concrete walls. It hits him like a freight train, the memory of everybody on the ground, but he feels so heavy he can't even raise an finger, so he can only gasp a little.

After a few minutes internally yelling at his body to move, like in that Kill Bill scene, he can finally find the energy to turn his head to see something else than the top half of the room he's in. And dear god, there's another bed in the room, and the small shaking thing curled up in the corner is a _kid_. 

He can't be more than ten, looking at him with fear in his big wide eyes, and Stiles feels rage growing in him when he notices the streak on blood on his face, caked in his hair. The teen is so furious the adrenaline helps him shake off the last of whatever drug they gave him, and sit up.

“Hey, kiddo.”, he says softly, winces at his hoarse voice. It's funny, he thinks, how he unconsciously tries to sound like his dad. He moves slowly, presents his hands to show that he has nothing in them.

“I'm Stiles. What's your name? Do you know where we are?” The kid still doesn't move an inch. Stiles sighs. “Okay, I'm going to stay on this side of the room, I'm not going to hurt you. Okay? I'm- I'm right here where you can see me, see? Not. Moving.”

He can't help the frustration that sips in his words. He doesn't know where he is, can only guess the Pack is okay and wonder why they weren't dead when he last saw them -though he's happy about it-, and he's here with a child that's the sons of bitches didn't hesitate to beat up.

The teen looks at the ground, tries to keep his breathing under control while his grip on the edge of the cot is turning his knuckles white. That's when he feels something cold touch his hand, and an electric shock like that time with Lydia the first time he saw her.

Stiles looks up to see the kid looking directly at him, and it's his hand that's so cold. Stiles moves carefully to take it between his big ones and try to put some warmth back in the boy.

Before he can say anything, or even think about what the kid could be, two men barge in the room without a word, one grabbing the kid roughly by the arm even though he doesn't struggle a bit, the other pointing a gun at Stiles and gesturing at him to move. The teen swallows nervously and complies. Whatever this is about, the best thing for now is to buy himself some time to be found.

They're brought to a big room that looks like a cliché abandoned warehouse. Stiles would snort if the situation left room to find anything funny. Plus, he's immediately attacked by a strong disgusting smell, making him gag and avoid anything that would make him inhale too much.

In the middle of the empty space, there's a man sitting on a chair, next to what looks like an examination table. On it, there's the source of the smell: an ugly old corpse.

“Sit.”, the man only says, pointing at two chairs in front of him. One of the guards push Stiles harshly with the tip of the gun when he hesitates for a second too long. He stumbles a step, fights the need to rub at his back where he can feel a bruise forming already.

The man clearly in charge of all this is young, somewhere between thirty and forty, nothing particularly interesting about him. He looks like the average guy you would never notice if you passed him by in the street.

“What do you want?”, Stiles asks, because he's not one to sit there and wait for an evil monologue that will take ages to get to the point. He wants to know why he's here, why this kid is here, this corpse, and how he can get out of it alive. He ignores the voice telling him that he knows exactly what's expected of him, and that he won't come out of it alive whether he goes with it or not.

The man in front on him huffs with a smirk, but it's clearly more annoyed than amused. “I want you to bring him back.”, he points to the cadaver. He's not one for monologues then. And he probably won't explain himself, why he wants this, who the dead man is.

Stiles looks around again, but there's nothing here that gives him a chance of escaping. There's not even ghosts inside which is odd, even if there's a flicker in the shadows that look a little bit like one but could be a trick of the light.

“I can't.”, Stiles lies. Half lies. He can, in theory, but he really doesn't want to. The dead aren't alive enough to be completely brought back without a surge of energy Stiles doesn't have. And no one wants to be the monster that turns his loved ones into half decayed puppets, even when they believe they need to. Even when they, in fact, do want to. To say that he can't do it is more easy than to let anyone make that mistake. It's his job to protect the dead, after all.

There's a dangerous glint in the man's eyes. He slowly gets up and approaches Stiles, obviously trying to look dangerous doing it but failing. And he suddenly backhands Stiles. The teen's head whips to the side and he almost falls out of the chair, chasing the stars from his vision just in time to grip the edge of his seat to keep himself on it.

He spits blood, prays he won't lose any teeth, before straightening to face the man again. The fucker has rings on his hands, Stiles can see them as clearly as he can feel their sting on his cheek.

“Bring Gil back.”, the man hisses.

“Listen here, Broken Record, it doesn't matter how many time you ask me or beat me up, I. Can't.”, Stiles shoots back with more anger and confidence than he really feels. He has to make them believe in what he's saying.

The man sighs, looks to the side like he's exasperated, and the next thing Stiles knows is that the thing he spits out along with the blood is one of his molars. Shit. He explores the bloody inside of his mouth with his tongue to feel the empty spot before righting himself again. He's starting to get nauseous, vision going fuzzy. He wishes he hadn't binge read about concussions that one time he was bored.

“Bring back Gil, or we kill you, the mute, and find the next monster to do it.” Stiles shakes, he doesn't know if it's the fear, the exhaustion or the pain. Probably a mix of all that. The man is obviously not one to play around and throw empty threat in the air, which makes him wonder what the kid is still doing here alive, so it's probably his last chance. He has to stall.

Before he has time to say anything, the man chuckles darkly. “Plus, next time we go after your incompetent Pack, they will not be as lucky.” Oh, and that's why they're not dead. Leverage. The hunters proved they can kill them anytime they want. And... _his_ Pack? 

“Okay. Okay, I'll do it.”, he answers in a defeated tone that he doesn't have to act for. He will not do anything to help the guy, but whatever happens he'll be dead in a few minutes when he realizes he's been played. The kid makes a sound, a sharp intake of air. Stiles doesn't know what to make of it. He really doesn't get what he's doing here.

If he's a Necromancer like himself and refused to help the hunter, why is he still alive and here? If he's anything else, like a Banshee, what is he doing here at all? Then it strikes Stiles. Obviously, these men know all about Necromancy, if they come from the Sorgentto family. They know that the more energy there is, the better chances there is for a resuscitation to succeed. And they know that this energy is shared between Necromancers. Still, he's just a kid, and they would both die doing this with the small amount of energy he gives off; and Stiles can feel it, now that he knows what to look for.

Stiles gets up from his chair, stumbles a bit when his vision blackens for a second, and walk to the body in a mostly straight line. Everything turns a little around him, so he's pretty sure he looks drunk.

The teen lets his hand hover over the body, trying not to puke at the close up vision and smell of it. He has a flash of his mom, still in her open casket, and him hiding in the funeral home until he was alone. He knew what he was then. He knew what he wanted more than anything in the world: bring his mother back. Bring her back and cancel that spell she did, probably not knowing that the price for saving him like this would be for her son to become linked with death in this awful way. More of a curse than a gift.

He hovered like this, then, his hands tiny in comparison, but more because he was so afraid to break her if he touched her. She looked so fragile. Then he put his hands on hers, and started trying to bring her back, feeling an immeasurable pain, and then hearing her voice with a clarity it never attained ever since.

_Don't take this choice away from me_ , she said, and added  _don't take yourself away from your dad_ . And he stopped. Now he wants to laugh and hate her, because wasn't she the one that took this choice away from him first? But he can't hate her, he can't, and so he lived with her death and the fact that what he did that day made her ghost follow them everywhere.

“Do it!”, the yell throws Stiles out of his memories, and he looks up just in time for a hand to grab his head and push it on the corpse. Stiles can't help it this time, he struggles until he falls on all four and throws up. He doesn't have time to get his bearings back before there's the sound of gunshots outside. All he can focus on is the shaking of his elbows as he wills his arms to support his weight and not let him fall in his own mess.

There's static and a voice talking in a foreign language in one of the guard's radio, and someone swears. Stiles tries to look up but the bright light coming from the front door of the building suddenly opening stabs his eyes painfully.

He's mind is still foggy when he feels the table next to him being wheeled away. He can't do anything when boots approach and hit him hard in the ribs, making him fall on his side and cry out in pain. He's still panting when the kid is next to him, tugging at his arm to try and make him get up. He's still trying to understand what's happening when the first explosion rings out and Erica appears next to them, silent but slightly colored. Almost really here.

Stiles looks up at the ceiling that's groaning dangerously, the beams that crack and bend when the detonations keep happening. Everything is starting to collapse. Stiles looks up at Erica, sends her all the energy he can find knowing it won't be enough for her to take the kid away and come back for him, if it's even possible for her to teleport another human being with her. He has to believe she can, and the boy is a Necromancer, right? It has to work.

Stiles looks at Erica and says, “Go.”, and it's the hardest and simplest thing he ever did in his life. A faraway voice tell him about courage. He figures he can be brave for this, doing this, saving a life at the expense of his own. He lives on borrowed years, after all.

Then there's loud noises, pain, and nothing at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger? Cliffhanger. Trust me, you can't hate me now as much as you will next chapter :3 BUT! After all the hate, there's will be nice things for you to forgive me :)
> 
> What's the swear word you use the most? I don't really know what would be mine in English now that I think about it...in French I'm going with the very used and traditional "putain" which really is punctuation at this point xD It's kind of an equivalent for "fuck".


	11. Cold hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, direct live from mcdonalds for the wifi! I tried uploading it from my phone but it ruined the formatting :( My best friend says hi! 
> 
> Also, this is the highest point of your hate for me!! After that it's good good :)

John feels his blood run cold the second he pulls up in front of the McCall house, Melissa next to him in the passenger seat, Chris already halfway out even as the car is not completely parked, having seen the same thing as him. A window is broken, almost invisible smoke pouring out of it and into the night sky.

The three of them run in as fast as they can, both men with their weapons already drawn. The front door is still locked, and John waits as Melissa unlocks it with trembling fingers while Argent runs to the back of the house.

There's no one inside, just this fog that makes them cough, and soon Chris' voice comes from the backyard to call them out. When he steps through the door, all the Sheriff can do is freeze, paralyzed by the shock of what he sees.

All the wolves are groaning and trying to get up, blood all over them even if the wounds it comes from are already healing; Chris is by his daughter who hit her head on the railing when she fell backward trying to avoid the bullets. Melissa runs to Lydia, the girl crying and clenching her jaw while pressing her hands to her bleeding thigh. John roams his eyes over the scene again and again. He can't make sense of the blatant absence of his son there.

Derek is the most badly wounded, or maybe the last to heal, but it's still towards his shaking form that John goes. He doesn't know why, but he feels like if someone has an answer about Stiles, it'll be the man.

Derek looks up, and the expression twisting his face is something between grief and guilt, but John doesn't let him turn away. Whatever happened, it's not his fault. The Sheriff still has repeat it to himself, he saw a whole Pack of werewolves to the ground, so there's no way anyone could have stopped whatever happened; but has to push down the wave of anger he feels against them: they swore to protect Stiles. And they failed.

The Sheriff crouches next to the wolf, helps him straighten up.

“Derek, what happened? Where's Stiles?”, he tries to keep his tone soft. He saw the Hale fire file, Laura's, and Derek doesn't need to feel responsible for anything else beyond his power.

“They, uh, they attacked us?”, the man tries to answer, his eyes a little glazed, mind probably foggy. “They attacked us and I tried to protect Stiles from the bullets but they weren't firing at him, because- because they _wanted_ him, and so I tried to fight all of them but everyone else was down and I- I couldn't I- I'm so sorry.” His eyes are wide, his face nothing but devastated.

“It's okay, son, you did your best. We'll find him.”, and it hurts a little when he says _son_ , even if he knows it's just his own way of speaking. It reminds him that his kid is missing, and at the hand of very dangerous men by the look of it.

They all gather in the living room, Melissa bandaging Lydia's leg temporarily because the girl doesn't want to leave for the hospital just yet. It's a clean shot, through and through, so Melissa agrees to wait until they have a plan to drive her to be seen by a doctor.

They're all speaking at the same time, panic in the air, and it's starting to get on all their nerves so it gets more and more loud until Lydia screams. It's not a Banshee's scream, but they all stiffen and quiet at hearing her voice like this, conditioned by past events to fear what it means.

“Quiet!”, she says, and then tilts her head to the side like she's listening to something. The room is suddenly very cold. “She wants us to follow her.” Lydia whispers and gets up. But she forgot her leg, so she falls back in the couch with a hiss.

“You're not following anyone anywhere, sweetheart.”, Melissa tells her gently.

“Who wants us to follow her?”, Scott asks, crouching in front of his friend. “Does she knows where Stiles is?”

“Yeah, yes she does. She'll show you the way.”, Lydia looks in the empty air next to Scott's head. “Erica.”

 

Once the initial shock of hearing about Erica is over, the Pack starts to get ready. Allison insists she's okay and doesn't need to have her head checked. Melissa lets it go because she's already struggling with Lydia, but she gets a promise from the huntress to come by the hospital after all is over.

They mostly try to understand how they're supposed to follow Erica when they can't see her. Lydia wants to go to help, which is what Melissa is struggling with. She relents when Lydia declares that they won't ever find Stiles if she doesn't help, and the Sheriff feels a little bit guilty to ask Melissa to let the girl come.

He's more and more unnerved as minutes pass, feeling like a lion in a cage, impatient to go out, needing to fight to get his fear and anger out. Derek is completely still, arms crossed on his chest, but they glance at each other every now and then because they know the other feels the same.

As soon as every one knows in which car to go, they all pile up in the vehicles, and start to drive. Lydia is in the first car, window open so she can follow whatever weird feeling she gets from Erica showing them the way.

They get out of the cars when Lydia suddenly shouts at Chris to stop. Then she leads the Pack through a patch of forest, until they're at the edge of a small incline leading to a warehouse that has seen better days.

There's eight guards outside, running the perimeter, and according to Scott there's five heartbeats inside. Given the way one beats too fast, and another beats even faster, they suppose Stiles is not the only victim of these guys. That leaves eleven hunters, and even if no one says anything, they're all a little hurt that they were overpowered by this small number of hunters, in comparison with what they had to fight against before.

But still, they mostly dealt with creatures before, which are never as organized as this, and they got out of the Alpha Pack situation almost only thanks to Scott pulling a True Alpha act.

They can hear the voices inside, but that means they can also hear a slapping sound and a grunt of pain. It makes all the weres growls. The Sheriff doesn't ask, he understands perfectly. He doesn't need to have words making it even more real.

Chris puts a hand on the man's shoulder, and they both turn to Scott and Derek to try and come up with an emergency rescue plan. The problem with following ghosts is that you don't know what to expect.

But they don't have time to do anything. They don't know what gives them away, if it's a surveillance system or a supernatural creature the hunters have with them. All they know is that before they even have time to go down and fight them, they all retreat.

The Pack runs down the small hill, trying to get to them and stop their escape. But they're still too far away when they're thrown back a step by the blast wave of an explosion. There's the sound of a few more. All they can do is stand there, shocked, and witness with horror the warehouse collapsing on itself.

Before it's over, before they have time to scream, run, do anything, they're stopped by the surprise of a gray figure appearing out of nowhere, carrying a bloodied kid.

“Erica...”, Boyd whispers, stretches his hand to try and touch her. She vanishes before his fingers can go through the memory of her hair. The crash of tons of metal beams colliding with the ground makes all of them look back at the warehouse. There's an eery silence, then, and every one aside from the Sheriff is stuck between Erica's appearance and what this destruction means.

“Scott,” the weak voice of the Sheriff comes to the young Alpha's ears, “tell me they took him with them. Tell me Stiles wasn't still inside.”

 

Stiles doesn't see his dad running inside, frantically searching for him, shouting his name more and more desperately. He doesn't see Derek putting a hand on the man's shoulder and focusing his hearing, hoping and hoping so much it hurts that he'll pick up a heartbeat. He does. It's faint but he does, and he almost collapses like the warehouse a few minutes ago, before pointing in the right direction. Both men are helped by Scott and Isaac but there's not much space for the others to do anything else than stand back and watch.

Stiles doesn't see the trembling of Derek's hands. He talked to him about death once, the one that invades every waking moment. Maybe the others saw this coming, but maybe Derek had been blind to it because we're too often oblivious to love when we think we don't deserve it.

He lived through abandonment and death, but despite Stiles' nature the man never reduced him to that concept. He also never thought the teen would be the first to go, because he was always so sure he would be the first to die, of all of them, after Erica.

He never thought about losing Stiles, so he never really thought of having him. He thought he would be the pain of others so he avoided being what comes before. Now, all he has left is getting debris out of the way between him and the fading heartbeat. He tries to tell himself that it's his healed wounds that he still feels, and not each of his nerves anticipating another loss.

 

John can see a hand sticking out of the rubble. A painfully familiar hand. He drops to his knees in front of it, unaware of the others respectfully staying back as he digs and digs, mumbling under his breath, a deep panic setting itself inside his bones.

“No, no, no, not again. Not again, please.” The fingers twitch, and he pauses just the time to carefully grasp them, tears falling at the weak clenching around his own hand. “I'm here, son, I'm right here, I'll get you out.”, John says with determination, and goes back to getting debris out of the way.

He lifts a jagged piece of beam, and there's his kid's face and torso. He can't help the sob tearing itself out of his throat. There is his son's blood, running down his face, sticking his hair together. Slowly sipping out from under the rest of the pile that still pins Stiles to the ground. Pouring from wounds he can't see from where he is.

Stiles eyes flutter open despite the way his eyelashes stick together with blood. Deep brown irises try to focus on his dad's face.

“D-dad?”, the teen says, the word causing a coughing fit. John tries his hardest to believe the new trail of blood doesn't come from his boy's mouth. “Is she s- safe?”

John can't force a word out, so he just nods with a small smile and tears. Stiles' head lolls a little but he has a content smile on his face. “I sa- I saved her...I s-...Are you proud of me now?”, he whispers between light coughing fits.

“I've always been proud of you.”, John croaks out. He's two seconds from falling apart, but he can't do that now. He hears sirens in the distance, supposes someone called 911 and a part of his brain is grateful someone did, because despite all his years in law enforcement, he was too far from cold headed enough to think about something as important as that.

Stiles eyes are less and less focused, eyelids growing heavy. “'m sorry f'r mo- mom. I sh'dve tried.” It's the last this he slurs before there's silence again. John wishes he could stop everything. He wished the ringing in his ears would stop because it's keeping him from hearing his son. He wishes he didn't feel so cold, because Stiles' skin is freezing and he has to warm him up. He has to warm him up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M (not) SORRYYYYYYY!!!
> 
> Also, are you more of a sci-fi, fantasy, classic, or something else fan? I'm 55% sci-fi and 45% fantasy haha


	12. Everything you wanted to know about Necromancers but were too afraid to ask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER BEFORE THE EPILOGUE!  
> Are you happy? I'm happy!  
> It's a happy/sad chapter, leading to a happy/happy epilogue :)

When Stiles was ten, he learned what it's like to fight for your life when the battle is already lost. When Stiles was ten, his mom went to see an old friend. She came home that night, kissed her husband, wrote a letter and sat on her son's bed. Listened to his ragged breathing and caressed his burning forehead.

Stiles was ten and dying and one morning he woke up full of life and without a mother. He started seeing her all the time, mute and empty. He started seeing _them_ everywhere. He couldn't put a foot in the cemetery, on the day of her funeral.

When Stiles was ten, he learned what it's like to want to stop fighting so bad when you can't, because you can see your dad's grief and can't bear the idea of leaving him alone. They don't really talked about these weeks full of screams and nightmares and panic attacks, scratches marks where he tried to stop seeing her.

After that, they learned about this world they were dumped in without warning. Sometimes Stiles hates his mother for it, but the guilt at it causes is worse than running away and being followed by ghosts. Worse than the pain of the rituals.

Stiles is used to being alone after each one of those, witches don't stay, his dad's waiting for him at home. Stiles is used to be alone.

Until one day...

 

Stiles opens his eyes slowly. He feels like he should be in a lot of pain. He almost expect to be in a cemetery after a ritual but thinks the sky is really weird looking. Which can be explained by the fact that he's actually in a white and blue room and the sound of beeping finally gets to his awareness.

When he turns his head to the side he almost expect to be alone in the room, but here's his dad, snoring lightly. And behind him there's Derek, coming around abruptly and posing his eyes on Stiles. They smile.

Stiles takes a deep breath. He feels something warm in his chest. He's starting to understand what it is.

 

They're all gathered in the cemetery. Boyd is a step in front of everyone else, something small in his hands that no one can see. Isaac grips a Catwoman comic so tight in his hands that the pages bend a little. Derek has his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, tries not to show his emotions.

Scott is a little to the left of everybody, Kira next to him. He didn't know Erica that well, but he liked her. Kira never even had a chance to meet the girl. Allison gets closer to Isaac so she can hold his hand in hers, hoping to comfort him as much as she can. Malia seems more interested by the flurry of activity in front of them than by the reason for it. She never knew Erica either.

The parents stand by the cars. John is not here. Stiles never wanted his dad to be there when he performed rituals, and now they have a kid to take care of. As it turned out, the child was actually mute, and Derek surprised everybody when he started signing. Then, he turned to the rest of the Pack with a smile.

“Her name is Sarah.”, he said and dared with a raised eyebrow anyone to comment on it, then he added more sadly, “She's an orphan.”

The Sheriff called around, confirmed that she was the missing kid they heard about, and proceeded to ask to be her legal guardian. Stiles and Sarah couldn't let each other out of their sight once they were able to bring her to see him in the hospital. Isaac had joked that they looked like two cats, curled up together like that, and added, “Because, you know...cats can see ghosts.”

It had made Stiles laugh, and he tried to sign the joke to Sarah with the little he managed to learn from Derek, which strangely wasn't present enough during visiting hours to teach him _that many_ signs.

As for the hunters, the Pack caught them the week before, with the help of the Sorgenttos. The family was in the known about Necromancers and their importance with helping the dead completely leave this world, and between hunts for other creatures, they were meant to protect Necromancers from being killed. The final resolution of this case was why, two months after his kidnapping, Stiles was finally allowed to perform a ritual.

 

The Pack waits patiently. Looks at Stiles who only gazes into nothing, sitting in the grass with two women on each side of him. One of them finishes a flower crown and puts it on his head, the other holds a white cloth that she delicately puts on his shoulders. He's all dressed in white, looks as ethereal as the creatures looking like women singing and laughing around him, putting flowers and branches all around the body wrapped in a shroud that they all know is Erica.

There's actual humans too, three witches standing a few feet away from the Pack, overlooking everything. One of them is Stiles' neighbor. They don't really have any role to play in the ritual, they're here because it's become a tradition. Witches are the ones that helped the Necromancers, after hunters decimated them, they created the spells that allowed it to work. In exchange, when one of them passes away, they always get a ritual.

Stiles explained to all of them, that Necromancers shared energy. The more they were, the more energy they had, and the dead tapped into it to go wherever they're meant to. Without it, they're stuck in between two states. It's also why he can't raise the dead like in the old legends: there isn't enough energy now to do it.

When everything is ready, the Pack steps into this scene out of a renaissance painting. Isaac has known this place his whole life but he doesn't recognize it, everything seems golden in the light of the declining sun. Boyd puts down something between flowers petals, Isaac puts the comic next to Erica's head. They chose to burn her body, once it's over. They feel like it's right.

The songs don't stop, happy but sounding melancholic, as one by one they all say goodbye. They all feel like they never really had a chance to do so. It's healing, in a way.

Stiles looks at them with something soft and sad in his eyes. He knows they can't see the hundreds of ghosts surrounding them, staring into nothingness, attracted by what they feel coming. He wishes he could help all of them, but he doubts he could do so in one life time. But he's confident that some day, there will be enough Necromancers again.

Then it's time. The Pack is standing in a line behind Stiles, and he breathes deep, closes his eyes. The sudden silence is deafening.

Then, nausea hits him, thorns seem to push their way under his skin, in his lungs, his arms, his legs. Erica appears between him and the Pack, but they can't see her yet. He gives an extra push, because he doesn't want their last image of her to be that empty shell of a girl they knew, an echo.

He can't see it, back to her and blinded by the pain anyway, but he knows that when they can finally see her, she's moving, smiling at them and waving a goodbye that they can't hear falling from her lips. “I love you. Tell them I love them, please. And thank you, Batman.” is all Stiles' mind is capable of grasping.

When she disappears, Stiles doesn't see it either, he feels it in the relaxing of his body, the receding of the pain that went from his heart to all his body, and he's falling backwards. Soft hands catch him, lie him down and cover him. He thinks he can hear crying over the sad chanting resonating around him, slowly fading as the darkness overtakes him.

He knows what comes next, a witch told him once.

They will surround him with flowers and gifts like they did for the dead girl they didn't know, then leave with in a slow procession, vanish like they were never here. One of them will linger to tell the Pack to leave Stiles here, the deep red cloth covering him. Stiles always woke up alone, after.

But when he opens his eyes, this time, they're all waiting for him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW WAS IT?  
> Okay, so, fav time of the day/weather? Evening/sunny with wind (my actual fav is thunders and lightnings, but every day would be awful xD)
> 
> And now I'm going to eaaaaaat


	13. The faint but pretty scent of vanilla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from one of the first Night Vale episode!
> 
> LAST CHAPTER GUYS! A short epilogue to wrap things up :) I guess this story proves that I actually can write a long story, and also that I'm very bad at chapter titles!
> 
> THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS AND KUDOS, I couldn't have finished this without! You readers are the lights of an author's life, so, keep being awesome :)

Stiles looks at the waves a few feet from him, and sighs contentedly. A shadow falls on him before Derek sits besides him.

“This was a long overdue vacation.”, Stiles says with a smile, eyes closed and face turned towards the sun. It's still early enough in the day that it's not too hot. He will soon need to cover himself in sun cream. He's already planning to ask Derek to put it on his back.

“How're you feeling?”, the man asks, because he's always worried like that. Stiles opens his eyes, looks briefly at his dad playing in the waves with a very happy Sarah, and turns to Derek. Looks at him, in the light of the sun, the fresh breeze ruffling his hair. He looks at him and his heart swells in his chest until all he can feel is the wild beat of it against his ribcage.

Derek turns too, and mirrors Stiles, roams his eyes over the other's face. Drinks in the sight of this happy and bright man, master of death but so full of life. His smiles too. Leans a little so that their shoulders touch.

They're both ready, then, more than ever, to let themselves live. Accept the fact that avoiding the obvious love they have for each other will not cancel the risk of losing the other, but that they should enjoy it fully, completely, while they can. Stiles knows that he'll do some rituals once he's back home. He's ready.

Stiles hears his dad's laugh, looks up to see the man looking back at him. The worry lines on his father's face are gone, leaving only traces behind. Reminders that the past is never forgotten, but you can move on and live fully again. John, more than anything else, is grateful to see the happiness radiating from his son's body: on his smiling face, his relaxed shoulder, the way he strands straighter.

John also sees two boys sitting side by side on a sunny day. He sees them lean towards each other. He looks away then, turns back to Sarah who runs in the water with the biggest smile. Everything's good. They're all good.

When he glances back, Stiles and Derek are shyly holding hands. He knows a strawberry blond that will be very smug about winning this bet.

 


End file.
